The Night With Stars
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPLM slash. Two years after the war, and Lucius is back in power as if he's never been gone. Harry, tired of denying his own power, decides that he might as well enlist Lucius's help to change the Ministry. Updated Wednesdays. COMPLETE.
1. Who Calls

**Title:** The Night With Stars

 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

 **Pairing:** Harry/Lucius

 **Warnings:** Angst, violence, mentions of past torture and gore

 **Rating:** R

 **Summary:** Two years after the war, and Lucius is back in a position of power as if he's never been gone. Harry, gifted himself with power that he's grown tired of denying, decides that he might as well enlist Lucius to help him change the Ministry instead of trying to struggle against him.

 **Author's Notes:** Another of my Wednesday one-shots, for the following anonymous request: _Harry/Lucius. In which Harry is intelligent enough to realize that working with the enemy will be more productive than trying to battle it out. Could be political Harry OR magically powerful Harry. Post-voldemort if possible. Maybe even mentor Snape here._ Other than the mentor Snape being a portrait, this is basically the plot of the fic. It will probably have five to six parts.

 **The Night With Stars**

 _Chapter One—Who Calls_

Harry stepped into the Minister's office, already crowded with people who wouldn't call themselves flunkies, and waited for the reaction to his presence to subside.

It took a moment. It always did, at least since the war. Harry's power soared around his shoulders in a snapping comet tail that disturbed dust, made people smell various things that mattered to them—like Amortentia, they'd told Harry—and ruffled the air and made it clearer and purer. And it apparently weighed on their heads and skin in a way it never did to Harry.

When the non-flunkies looked as if they could discuss things again, Harry sat down in the chair in front of Kingsley's desk and paid calm attention to him. Kingsley gave him an apologetic look and held up his wand.

"Do you mind?" he asked, and when Harry shook his head, cast the small Wind Charm that would clear the heads and noses of the people in the room and set up a breeze to counter the one Harry's magic always caused.

The noise didn't resume when their heads had cleared, because these people were more polite than that. Harry waited a little, and then asked, "What did you want to see me about, Minister?"

Kingsley glanced once around the room. Harry looked with him. He didn't actually know the names of most of these people. The post-war Ministry went through constant changes, as people who had worked willingly with Voldemort got exposed and sent to Azkaban, and others Harry had thought they could trust said something thoughtless about Muggleborns and got overheard.

Harry knew these were the current heads of Departments, though, or at least undersecretaries. He nodded again once Kingsley turned back to him. "Then you've made the decision?"

"Yes." Kingsley cleared his throat even though there was nothing to clear it about. "We—can't, Harry. We're sorry. But what you're asking for is too sweeping a change, and too quick."

Harry sat where he was, tapping his hands against the arms of the chair.

"Please don't be angry," Kingsley continued, and then stopped. _Maybe he realizes that pleading tone is inappropriate for a Minister actually in control of his Ministry,_ Harry thought snidely. "I mean—understand that everyone needs to go through the appropriate channels, Harry. That includes the magically powerful."

Harry sighed a little. "Can you tell me one thing?" When Kingsley nodded anxiously, Harry continued, "What is so _objectionable_ about giving proper schooling to Muggleborns before they enter the wizarding world? About inviting them to attend the sort of tutoring and play groups that children raised in the wizarding world have? About checking on them to make sure their relatives don't abuse them?"

His magic curled and howled around him when he said that, but Harry ignored. Rita Skeeter had discovered eighteen months ago that he'd been abused and gleefully abandoned talking about Dumbledore to talk about that. Harry had grown past and around that wound of public attention.

And Skeeter had done him a favor, even though she hadn't meant to. What everyone knew about Harry, no one else could use to blackmail or hurt him.

"It's not that it's objectionable," said Kingsley weakly, his eyes on the space immediately beyond Harry's shoulders. Harry assumed a black cloud was forming there, the way it sometimes did. "It's that you're asking for immediate, huge changes. You know how slowly the Ministry moves. We would need time, we would need money, that you're not letting us have."

"I offered to donate the money. I've already started construction of some of the buildings that could support schools and orphanages."

"The problem is," said one of the undersecretaries who worked in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, "we have to question what sort of authority you have to establish these schools and orphanages. You don't know much about children, do you? You have to listen to the experts."

"Those experts who've spent decades assuming we could leave abused children in the Muggle world?" Harry smiled at the tall, thin woman, April Gunarke, who looked away from him uneasily. "You know what that nearly resulted in with both myself and Voldemort."

"Did result in," whispered someone who seemed to assume he would be anonymous.

Harry just looked at him. "With Voldemort, yes. But if you're going to say that I'm the worst result of that system you can imagine, I'm going to respond that you seem to have a rather limited imagination."

Silence for a moment, and then Kingsley leaned forwards. "Undersecretary Gunarke does have a point, Harry. You could soothe a lot of anxieties by working with the experts the Ministry employs."

"I tried that for the last month," Harry said, and leaned forwards. The magic moved with him, making the air burn and ripple. Harry waited patiently for some of the dropped jaws to pop up again and the glazed eyes to focus, then shook his head. "And they told me there was _nothing_ that could be done. Not small steps, not temporary measures. _Nothing_."

Kingsley cleared his throat and looked around once at his enchanted subordinates. Harry shrugged unrepentantly when Kingsley turned back to stare at him. He had given up apologizing for his magic, too.

"I think you perhaps took their words too literally. If you explained some of your plans and what you would like to do—"

"I tried," Harry said. "I spent hours in meetings with them. All of them told me that Muggleborn children needed to stay in the Muggle world for fear of violating the Statute of Secrecy. All of them told me no one could be sacked from the Ministry, or even asked under Veritaserum, if they knowingly refused pleas from abused children at Hogwarts, because that would violate privacy laws. All of them told me I couldn't use my magic to shelter some Muggleborn children because it might frighten the parents."

Kingsley hesitated. Harry thought he knew why. Kingsley had thought they were talking solely about young Muggleborn children, and that _was_ the cause that was most important to Harry. But now Harry had brought up the issue of children already in the wizarding world.

"Those are true, as far as they go," said Kingsley. "But you can work for emendations in the laws. And visiting the parents of Muggleborns on your own is probably not a good idea, but you could hire someone qualified to go with you."

Harry smiled. "Who? They've all refused, and told me that Muggles need to be left alone."

Kingsley turned around as if he would look for the culprit among the undersecretaries. Harry serenely ignored the way some people shuffled and blushed. No one in this room had actually said that.

He couldn't even blame individual people for this, really. Harry was past the notion that he could blame Voldemort or Dumbledore, and have his happy answer, and that everything would be better the instant he killed Voldemort or began to speak up against some of Dumbledore's policies.

The problem was wizarding _culture_. The culture that said Muggles were dangerous and pleasing at the same time, sort of like lions, and needed to be stayed away from. Some people were frightened by the thought of going among Muggles. Others were fascinated, but they just wanted to ask Muggles questions about how they got along without magic. Neither attitude would help Muggleborn children.

"You _also_ can't make the case that all Muggleborn children are abused, or even the majority," said a fussy voice from the back of his room. Harry knew without looking that it was Ichabod Crabbe, who worked in the Department of Records. "I'm sure that many of them are well-treated by their parents. We would cause more harm than good by interfering with their family situations."

"The point is," said Harry, "we don't know. Because we have no numbers. Because _no one's checked_." His magic rose around him, and he ignored Kingsley's calming stare. "You might be right, but you can't know because you haven't gone and looked."

"There is no truth to the assertion that all Muggles are wild beasts, violent people who hate magic—"

"There is also no truth to the assertion that all Muggles would react calmly when confronted with magic that we've done a good job convincing them _doesn't_ exist." Harry gestured to the black cloak snapping behind him. He knew it would be insubstantial right now; people would see it but not feel it touch them. Unless he willed them. "I know now that my accidental magic outbursts were unusually strong. Would _anyone_ have known what to do with them, how to confront them?"

"If they wouldn't, you couldn't have expected your Muggle relatives to deal with them well." Crabbe was nodding as if he had solved the problem.

"But they did an especially bad job of coping with them," said Harry. He had no need to speak in further details, not when the details had been in all the papers for months already, with some repeated whenever the editors ran out of other news or got bored. "I want to make sure that doesn't happen to any other magical children."

"Mr. Potter, magic as intense as yours is—rare." Undersecretary Gunarke had probably been about to put "thankfully" in that pause, Harry thought. "You can't assume the treatment of all magical children living with Muggle relatives will be as bad as yours was."

"Or as good as you think it will be. We can't assume anything."

"Mr. Potter." That was Holden Perslana, who had changed his name from Umbridge after the war. "You sound dangerously close to voicing the sort of anti-Muggle bias I thought you had made it your life's mission to struggle against."

Harry shook his head slowly. "I've made my life's mission _knowledge,_ Mr. Perslana. That means we need more of all of it."

He supposed it would also be fair to say that he had made his life's mission changing the Ministry, but that was the sort of thing they didn't need to hear about. Harry had lost the tendency to think he needed to explain everything after the war.

"I'm afraid that we can't help you." Kingsley brought his folded hands down with a little thump in the middle of his desk. Harry thought it was his way to regain control of the meeting. "Mr. Potter. I do appreciate what you want to do. But you want too much, too fast, and you won't meet with the experts."

"I told you that I had, and what they hadn't done."

Kingsley shifted a little under his stare, and shook his head. "I can't give you any different answer, Mr. Potter. For the sake of the stability of the Ministry and keeping families together, I _can't_."

Kingsley's eyes were pleading with him for understanding. And Harry did understand. Kingsley had won support from the political machine that was the Ministry, and he needed to stay in power to accomplish his own goals. They were no less urgent for him than Harry's were for _him_. Kingsley couldn't take the risk to help him.

But Harry said only, "I've learned that a family is who you choose. Not who you're blood-related to." He stood with a little bow of his head towards both Kingsley and the flunkies, and said, "Thank you for seeing me this morning."

The current of relaxation running around the room would have been visible to him even without the instincts he'd developed in the last two years. Harry hoped he hid the twitching of his lips well enough.

They thought he was defeated. They would reassure each other. What could he possibly do on his own? He'd come to them for help, and they'd turned him down. There was nowhere else he could go.

 _Their definition of nowhere,_ Harry thought, as he moved away from Kingsley's office and into the corridors, _is not the same as mine._

His magic snapped behind him once more, making small blue fires spring up on the curtains. People rushed to put them out with water charms, and it was easy enough to do. Harry hadn't intended to burn Kingsley's office down behind him.

Merely to make them think a little. Merely to warm them, though there weren't many who would manage to take the warning.

* * *

Lucius leaned back and considered the request lying on the desk in front of him. It had made it through every protective spell he had around his study, every test to reveal harmful magic on the parchment, and every test with an artifact that would have shown Lucius subtler compulsions or attempts to make certain contingencies come true.

Either Potter was so clever there was no point in defending against him and it would be an honor to die at his hands—

Or the request was genuine.

For the first time, Lucius let himself fully read and soak in the words, rather than studying the color of the ink for hidden poisons or casting charms that made the parchment leap and rustle to the point where he could hardly read them anyway.

 _I won't pretend we're friends. But I thought we could be allies. I know your goals aren't the same as mine. But I thought they might coincide. And I have the power to make good on my end of any bargain we strike. Your power is beyond question._

 _I wish to change the Ministry. At first I only wanted to change it in one specific direction, to make the people who worked there see Muggleborn children and wizarding children growing up in Muggle homes as people who might be abused. Now, though, I realize the problem is the culture of the Ministry itself._

 _I might be stupid to ask you for help. After all, you benefited from that culture both before and after the war. But I do think that you could benefit from a change. Your name is still tarnished with some people, no matter what you do. For now, the ones you bribed and who respect your name and owe you favors are still in power in the Wizengamot._

 _For now._

 _I think you can see the numbers as well as I do. There are more Muggleborn children at Hogwarts this year than pure-blood children. The number who grew up in the Muggle world, even if they have magical parents, are two-thirds the number of those who grew up in the magical world. That number might increase more slowly than the number of Muggleborns, but things are changing._

 _If you want your family to go on having power and prestige in the midst of the change that's coming, then you need to do something that will endear you to the Muggleborns. And there are people in the Wizengamot who would never listen to you, but would listen to me. And this magic that I carry around me like Voldemort's final revenge._

 _Will you consent to a meeting with me? I can be free at any time in the next week except Saturday mornings. That's when I spend time with my godson._

 _Yours,_

 _Harry Potter._

Lucius nodded slowly. Other than the possible touch of melodrama when he called his magic the Dark Lord's final revenge, this was the letter of someone both powerful and sensible, someone who had considered the odds and arrived at a reading of the current political situation much like Lucius's.

 _There is no harm in a meeting,_ Lucius wrote back, the only line he intended to scribe on the parchment. He would let Potter choose the time and place of the meeting. Not only would it make Potter feel more secure, but it would allow Lucius to draw him into further correspondence, to test his mettle and his potential as an ally, and think through the possible consequences.

In his own chest, though, the seat of all his own most secret impulses and thoughts, Lucius felt no real doubt as he watched the owl wing off into the sky.

 _Working with someone this adult will be a positive pleasure._


	2. Blazing

Thank you for all the reviews!

 _Chapter Two—Blazing_

"Thank you for seeing me at such short notice, Mr. Malfoy."

Lucius nodded without taking his eyes from Potter. They were in the private room of one of the restaurants in Diagon Alley that catered to anyone with enough money. Lucius had seen the golden curtains around him, the smooth and polished wood of the tables, the comfortable chairs overflowing with charms and cloth, before. He hadn't seen Potter in such an environment.

In fact, he had rarely seen Potter since the war, and Lucius found himself pleased with the changes. Potter had acquired a habit of standing taller and moving through the world with the kind of gravity that meant he was paying attention to his own importance. The magic around his shoulders lay on them like snow on the flanks of a mountain.

Potter wore blue dress robes, tastefully done. He took the seat across from Lucius and studied him in much the same manner before he reached out and tapped his finger against the small crystal sculpture of a swan in the middle of the table.

The swan at once stretched its wings and turned intelligently glinting blue eyes on them. "What will you have, sirs?" it asked in a delicate voice.

"The veal special," said Potter.

"Tea only for me," said Lucius, since tea came with its own platter.

The swan rose at once and flew through the curtains, disappearing in the direction of the kitchen. Potter leaned back and cupped his hand around the glass of water that had already soundlessly risen from the bottom of the table. "Do you agree that we can have a productive alliance, Mr. Malfoy?"

"If I didn't, I wouldn't have come. I don't waste my time on non-productive alliances anymore."

Potter nodded, if barely. "We'll both have to discuss some of the limits the other one shouldn't cross, of course."

"I would like to know what your goals are, first. I assume you know what mine are."

"To increase your personal power, leave your family in a position of importance when you die, and have an easy life while you're still alive."

Lucius paused with his own glass of water on his way to his lips. "You are under a misconception, if you think the work I do is easy. And you will be sorely disappointed if _you_ enter politics thinking that your name or power should win things for you without labor."

"Oh." Potter frowned. "I didn't mean that you didn't have to work. Just that you don't have to wonder how you'll eat that night or which roof you'll sleep under."

Lucius blinked. "You are starting from a further point below the Ministry hierarchy than I thought you were, Mr. Potter."

"Given what you know about my background, that surprises you?"

It shouldn't have, and Lucius acknowledged the hit with a nod. "Of course, if you have grown up with starvation, I imagine that distinction _does_ become more important."

"It does," said Potter quietly. "Anyway. I now have an easy life as well, but one I don't mind putting at risk. I can donate any of my money that you think the purpose needs, as long as I'm assured it's going for a good cause. And I don't mind moving or traveling or giving my food to others as a publicity stunt."

Lucius leaned back to study him some more. He remembered Potter as a walking sack of bones. He had filled out now, but Lucius thought his strength lay in the spirit burning behind in his eyes, far more than in his muscles.

"You intrigue me, Mr. Potter. Achieving this is more important to you than anything else?"

"Yes."

"Why? Pardon my bluntness, but you're safe now." Lucius took a sip of water after all. "You never have to go back to your Muggle relatives again, and you don't have family in the wizarding world that might be existing in abusive homes. Do you care _that_ much about strangers that you haven't met?"

"Why not? You do, too. And you've spent years hating people you know nothing about. Caring about strangers seems more productive to me than hating them."

Lucius choked a little. He put down the glass, since it would only serve to get him further into trouble, and studied Potter. "Forgive me, Mr. Potter, if my interest in you seems unusual. But this is…blunt enough that I wonder at your purpose in seeking me out."

"I don't need to like you personally to know how good you are at accomplishing your goals."

"But you would have to trust my allies as well. Including the Wizengamot members I imagine you are fairly frustrated with, since they've let people like me walk free."

Potter shrugged. "In that case, I can have them on my side if I get you there."

Lucius had to smile. He was accustomed to thinking of himself as the only one in a room with such ruthless practicality. Many of the pure-bloods he worked with really did hate Muggleborns and Muggles and sometimes anyone who wasn't of their families as much as they said they did. Lucius could use hatred, understand it, but he didn't want to surrender to it.

And it seemed Potter had come to the same conclusions.

"Do your friends like you working with me?"

"They don't yet believe I would seek you out."

Lucius frowned. "Someone may have seen us come in here, given the interest you provoke. You should tell them before they see it in the paper." He could build even on Potter's connections with the Weasleys, and he didn't want Potter to lose those connections in a moment of misplaced pride.

"I did tell them." Potter leaned back a little as the swan returned, bigger than before and made of transparent magic, with their plates balanced on its wings. The minute the plate landed in front of him, he began to cut into the veal and the delicate sliced vegetables scattered across it, but his eyes never left Lucius's face. "They didn't _believe_ me. Ron thought I was making a joke. Hermione shook her head and said I would never be that desperate, and that's where we left it."

Lucius sipped his tea and ate one of the small cucumber sandwiches that had come with it in silence. He had to ask, finally, because matters might become more disturbing than he wanted them to if he didn't. "Are you doing this to get back at them for some perceived slight?"

"No. I love Ron and Hermione. I would never want to hurt them. But I don't mind hurting myself, and I did warn them. They ought to know by now that I mean what I say."

Lucius nodded slowly. They _should,_ he thought, with years' more of experience than he had of the quiet, stern man in front of him.

The man with magic boiling around his shoulders, sparking and dancing blue and black. Sometimes white when Potter was attending more to the conversation than the food. Lucius would have at least paid respectful attention to anyone who walked in with that magic riding him, magic powerful enough to be _visible._ Not to mention tangible.

Perhaps the years of familiarity Potter's friends had with him had worked to their disadvantage rather than their advantage in this instance.

"So," said Lucius, and tried another delicate sip of tea. At least Potter was saying nothing right now that would make him choke. "Tell me what you have in mind."

* * *

 _I did judge him correctly._

Harry wanted to shake his head in the next second. Of course he had. There would have been no point in approaching Lucius Malfoy if he wasn't absolutely sure that the man cared more about everything else than about blood purity.

It was nice knowing it anyway, though. Harry took a few more bites as he thought about the best way to phrase this. Lucius didn't get impatient, instead sitting still and looking at Harry's mouth as if it was interesting.

Finally, Harry said, "I want to pursue a gentler version of the policy I outlined in my letter to you. That the Muggleborn numbers are increasing in the wizarding world, and so are the numbers of magical parents who marry Muggles or go back to their world to live, sometimes even work. I want to remind the pure-bloods, gently, that they represent collections of knowledge and facts that could be lost, and those collections are more important than who marries who."

"You cannot phrase it the way you did in the letter to me."

"I know. That's why I said a _gentler_ —"

But Lucius was shaking his head. "Trust me when I tell you, Mr. Potter, that for some of them it won't matter. There are, honestly, men and women out there who would rather see their culture die out than pass one bit of help to Muggleborns. They would think of it as dying for their principles if they couldn't live for them."

Harry closed his eyes and fought to keep from shaking his head. "All right. If you can tell me their names, and the names of the ones we should approach, I'd be grateful."

"Practical," Lucius murmured, in a tone that left Harry in no doubt about what a compliment he thought it was. "All right. Starting with the people you might have known at Hogwarts, I would say that we should leave off approaching the Crabbes, the Goyles, and the Parkinsons. It would also do no good whatsoever to involve Draco."

Harry snorted. "At least he has you as his father struggling to win some respectability for him, because he won't do it himself."

"No," Lucius agreed placidly. "But I have high hopes for my grandchildren, once Draco settles down to produce them. Now. I would also leave out the remains of the Flints, the Selwyns, the Vaiseys, and the Rosiers. Anyone who followed the Dark Lord recently and willingly."

"With you the only exception?"

"I am the only one of them who used the defense of being under the Imperius Curse during the first war _and_ managed to survive the second one. Or to survive it free. After all, the last I knew, Rabastan Lestrange and Avery were still doing well in Azkaban."

Harry had to grin. It was his testimony that had helped to place the surviving Lestrange brother there. "Good. So. Who are the ones we _should_ approach?"

Lucius put down his teacup and folded his hands in front of him as he shut his eyes. Harry watched, mildly impressed. It was as if Lucius was sorting through a mental pile of paperwork in front of him. Harry always had to go back home and put his memories of important meetings in a Pensieve to make sure he wouldn't miss anything.

"Among those you know personally, Greengrass, Nott, and Zabini would be amenable. So would Bulstrode, Smith, and perhaps Montague; I would have to make sure that the rumors of the Montagues having business ties to the Muggle world are accurate. And there are any number of people with pure-blood ancestors on one side and Muggleborns on the other who would jump at the chance to gain power for themselves."

"Instead of simply going along with pure-blood politics they don't agree with?"

Lucius nodded and opened his eyes. "Although—I hope to say this without disappointing you—they dislike them because of the aspersions such politics cast on their _own_ lack of completely pure blood. Not because they have a grand crusade or love for Muggleborns the way you do."

Harry had to snort again. "I don't expect anyone except people who already agree with me to do this because they have a grand crusade or love for Muggleborns."

Lucius relaxed for some reason. Harry wondered if he'd actually anticipated Harry making protests the way Hermione would have if someone told her they didn't really support increased rights for house-elves but were going along with her for some other reason.

Well, he could ask that later. He asked now, "Would any of them be willing to put funding behind orphanages and the like?"

"We can ask them. But not as the _first_ thing we ask them."

Harry nodded. "Then we should talk to them first about the preservation of magic and knowledge that only pure-bloods know?"

Lucius's mouth quirked in a faint smile. "As long as you remember that for most of them, these things are things that only pure-bloods _deserve_ to know. At least some of our work will have to be in convincing them to pass on such knowledge to the Muggleborns."

"I think I can do that with some of the children that I fully expect to find abused and needing removal from their homes. If they want to adopt those children, then they'll _have_ to share the knowledge with them."

Lucius paused. "You think they'll willingly adopt Muggleborn children?"

"The statistics I told you about in the letter I wrote aren't the only ones I've noticed. Few of the pure-blood families you've named have more than one child. Some of them have two, like the Greengrasses, but not all of _them_ are magically talented, or likely to have important positions in society. Some pure-bloods will need Muggleborns simply to survive. Maybe they'll make them legal heirs later in life instead of adopting them, but—"

"Remember what I said about some families wanting to die out rather than pass on _anything_."

Harry nodded. "But how common is that attitude? Really? I know it exists, but among how many families?"

Again Lucius performed that silent calculation Harry couldn't match, and finally said, "Perhaps around ten percent of the ones I'm most familiar with."

"And among the ones that you think are our likely allies?"

"Perhaps only the Notts."

Harry smiled. "I want to concentrate on the easy allies for now anyway, and only try to recruit the harder ones later. The ones who would never pass on knowledge to Muggleborns, who would ignore me anyway because I'm a nosy upstart half-blood, we might as well pretend don't exist."

Lucius chuckled. Harry sat back and cocked his head. "What's the matter?" He couldn't afford to ignore laughter or other doubting noises about this project right now, although maybe later he could.

Lucius smiled at him. "I simply see the fittingness of returning the lack of notice they would give you with your own complete lack of notice."

Harry hadn't thought about it in terms of fittingness—he didn't, usually—but now that Lucius had pointed it out, he supposed he could see it. "Will that make anyone more eager to join us?"

"Oh, undoubtedly." Lucius almost purred the words, in a voice that could be distracting if Harry let it, and then hunched forwards. "Now, let's plan our strategy."

Because Harry let nothing distract him when he was thinking of Muggleborn children and the ways to save them if they were abused, he put aside thoughts of Lucius's voice and began to speak.

* * *

Lucius lingered in the restaurant for a long time after Potter was gone, sipping from his cup of tea and watching the dancing fire with a smile he knew he hadn't worn for years.

What a fascinating specimen Potter was. Magical power, which Lucius had seen before, but rarely with such a focused goal behind it. Mighty wizards tended to either be theorists, who wanted simply to withdraw from politics and attend to their research, or, well, Dark Lords.

On-point and willing to play dirty with politics, something the young weren't known for. Younger wizards usually needed longer in reality to temper their idealism.

 _On the other hand,_ Lucius thought, as he touched the swan, which had gone back to being crystal in the middle of the table, and ordered more tea, _I suppose a war is the best cure for idealism._

And Potter had name recognition that was greater even than Lucius's, and the ability to listen. He had accepted the proposed changes Lucius had wanted to make to his strategy without demur, but when Lucius asked why, Potter had simply shaken his head and said, "You know these people better than I do."

 _So strange, to find someone who can say that and not make me think he's weak._

When Lucius finally went home, his mind was lingering on something else, densely enough that he nearly bumped into another wizard on his way to the Apparition point. And he was still thinking about it when he finally shut the doors of the Manor securely behind him.

Potter had beauty to go with everything else.

Not just the beauty of the magic sparking around his shoulders, sometimes flaring into a crown around his head, although that was intriguing enough. But the way he stood and moved and gestured had a bluntness that Lucius had never before seen married to elegance.

Which Potter _had_. Lucius had heard from Draco what a good flyer Potter was, but he had expected to see him somewhat clumsy on the ground, even so. Many skilled flyers were. Witness Viktor Krum.

And those eyes. Lucius didn't wish to fall prey to common admirations, but those eyes were something else, particularly when lambent with intelligence.

Lucius sighed and paused in the dark corridor before his lighted study to assemble his thoughts. He had promised himself when he entered politics again after the war that he would not let material considerations draw his attention from making the family great. It was one of the reasons he had separated from Narcissa, other than the plain fact that he and she had very different ideas about what kind of life Draco should lead.

Lucius did not have time for squabbles, or musings on the beauty of people, although he could still appreciate the beauty of a well-crafted plan. He had things to do.

More than ever, now that Potter had brought him this delicious bargain.

But because he knew himself, Lucius allowed his brain one more moment of thought on what could never be, his imagination filling in new gestures for Potter to make and new ways for his eyes to widen, before he strode firmly into the study and set to work writing the letters they would need for next week.


	3. Meetings in Tension

Thank you again for all the reviews!

 _Chapter Three—Meetings in Tension_

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with us."

Harry was the one who spoke, since he thought Lucius liked to preserve dignified silence for—some reason. For now, Lucius sat with his hands busy, both the thin china cup and the shallow saucer balanced in them, and watched Blaise Zabini with the polite attention he used on so many people.

"You're welcome." Zabini leaned back in his comfortable chair, watching them in return with slow blinks. He had a room not decorated as darkly as Harry had thought it would be, given most of the other pure-blood homes he'd visited. Most people seemed to like silver and deep green and bronze. Zabini had rooms and furniture in seashell green and brilliant blue, and while there was _some_ silver, it glinted and disappeared when Harry looked directly at it. The cushions beneath Harry's arse had the largest amount of luxury in the place.

"I have to admit a lot of it was curiosity," Zabini added, and drew Harry's attention away from his décor. "Harry Potter and Lucius Malfoy working together? This has _got_ to be good."

He raised his eyebrows. Harry answered with a smile. "Yes, it is. I've persuaded Mr. Malfoy that pure-bloods are going to be outnumbered by Muggleborns soon, and this is the time for him to start cultivating them as allies."

" _Really_?"

"Yes," Lucius said, the first word he'd spoken since they entered Zabini's house. He balanced the cup in the saucer again and looked at Zabini like a sphinx. "Mr. Potter has convincing statistics."

"He does?"

Harry concealed his amusement. Zabini looked a little dazed. Of course, Harry had never even taken Arithmancy.

But these two years since the war had changed Harry more than anyone else he knew. He folded his arms on the arms of the chair and said, "There are four hundred sixty-three children in Hogwarts this year. Do you know how many of them are Muggleborn?"

Zabini, unlike some of the people Harry had met, did decide to make a guess. "A hundred and three?"

Harry smiled a little. "One hundred and forty-six. The numbers of pure-blood children from traditional families, meanwhile—not children with one Muggle parent or one Muggleborn parent, which were most of the rest—were thirty-six."

Zabini gave a sharp cluck of his tongue. Then he sat there and thought, while Harry took the opportunity to sip from his cup. The tea felt hot and sticky in his mouth. Harry had taken the opportunity to send his magic into it the minute a house-elf brought it, removing any Compulsion Charms or the like that Zabini might have placed there.

"And there will be more," Harry added. "Pure-blood families usually only have one child, maybe two. A lot of Muggleborn students have siblings, or at least multiple cousins, who could also inherit magic."

Zabini paused again. Then he said, "There must be _something_ you want to do about it, since you aren't dancing in triumph on our families' graves."

Harry nodded. "I don't want to see Muggleborn children left in the Muggle world until they're eleven, with no contact with magic, and no understanding, and then bad treatment when they do arrive."

"Like you had."

"Mine is an extreme case, since I doubt most families are that abusive." Harry saw both Zabini and Lucius looking at him as if wondering how he could even discuss it, and smiled a little. _The one advantage of going through what I did. Most things don't hurt as much._ "And people had other causes to disapprove of me on a wide scale, which most Muggleborn children won't have, either. But being despised as people with 'dirty blood' won't make them inclined to be merciful when they realize the advantage they have in numbers. Being taught to appreciate and love the wizarding world would."

Zabini abruptly smiled. "I like the way you put this, Potter."

Harry just smiled back. He never knew what people meant when they tried to explain to him about styles of speaking, because to him, the way he talked was just the way he talked. And common sense, but they didn't mention that.

"So." Zabini twirled a ring around his finger that Harry hadn't seen before. It was silver, but engraved with what might have been runes. "I suspect we need you to tell us what practical courses of action there are, since I can't think of anything off the top of my head."

Harry nodded. "Start pushing for investigations into the families of Muggleborns immediately. Visit them and explain to them—and their parents—what magic is, and that their children aren't unnatural or alone. Remove children who actually are suffering abuse, which, again, I suspect isn't most of them. Soften the attitudes of pure-bloods towards Muggleborns and show them how they can make cultural descendants even if they can't make blood ones."

Zabini put his chin in his hands. "I wonder what culture you'll have left once you take out the hatred for Muggleborns."

"Comfort with magic," said Harry instantly. "Pure-blood children grow up seeing their parents perform magic all the time, and common spells that don't necessarily show up in classes at Hogwarts, _because_ the Founders and the Board of Governors assumed children would learn them at home with their parents. Bits of lore about taking care of wands and getting along with magical creatures and the Ministry that I never learned until too late to be of use to me. History other than goblin rebellions."

"Ah. Another victim of Boring Binns."

"Exactly. The only history I know is what I found out on my own. And what Hermione showed me," Harry added, because that was more than half of it. "And there must be all these stories and songs and proverbs and so on that pure-blood children know which I don't. I have to admit I haven't been patient enough to investigate those. My focus has been the magic."

"Understandably," Zabini murmured, his eyes on the air around Harry.

Harry finished, "Those are the things that I think pure-bloods can contribute, the wealth they don't even realize they have. Those are the things I want them to teach Muggleborns, so our world doesn't die and can go on."

Zabini studied him at his leisure. Harry found he didn't know for sure what Zabini would say. At the same time, he was spinning the ring around his finger and he hadn't denied them yet.

Zabini finally said, "I don't think my mother will be interested in this. She lives in Italy now, and the magical communities there are more isolated from the Muggle ones. They also don't have as many Muggleborns."

Harry nodded. "Thank you for your time, then." He started to stand, mind already moving on to Theodore Nott, who had agreed to meet with them next. Lucius had said he would be harder to convince—

Zabini leaned out and laid a warm hand on Harry's wrist. Harry started and looked at him. His touch felt strangely different from Lucius's.

"I said my _mother_ wouldn't be interested," said Zabini. "I am." He began to grin. "If only to see the expressions on some of the Wizengamot members' faces."

* * *

"Let me take the lead here," Lucius murmured, and stepped in front of Potter, tilting his head back to consider him for a moment as they Apparated into the palatial portico of the Notts' home, Black Resting.

"That's fine," Potter said, and dropped back behind Lucius. He paused. "Do you want me to play the part of fierce bodyguard? Or raging Muggleborn tide barely leashed?"

Lucius laughed before he could stop himself. Potter stared at him.

Lucius smiled, then. His chuckle had seduced people in the past—though, of course, rather to the Dark Lord's side than his own. He would not be pressing on with Potter for a host of reasons, but it was reassuring to know he could still attract attention that way.

Potter recovered and said, "You haven't told me what part I should play."

"Neither. You should play the powerful wizard you are, who's gracefully letting me take charge at the moment because I knew Theodore Nott well as a child and was good friends with his father."

Potter gave him a single thoughtful look, then nodded and stepped back again. He would never become unnoticeable, not with the air boiling behind him and white flames flickering out when he forgot to keep control of the magic, but he became _less_ noticeable.

Lucius knocked once. Black Resting shivered in response. The whole house was one tuned instrument, responding to the touch of someone who had visited in the past.

Lucius had once sought to duplicate that magic on Malfoy Manor, but he had found out what it cost, and why Theodore Nott's mother had died young. He folded his hands behind his back now, and waited.

Young Theodore opened the door two minutes later. Black Resting would also have told him _who_ was there, and this was not a task he would delegate to a house-elf.

"Please come in, Lucius, and have guest-right of this house." Theodore's eyes went to Potter, and weighed him. Lucius waited. If Theodore simply meant to dismiss them, he would have sent a message to say so.

"Come in, Potter."

 _Does Potter know what it means that he's denied guest-right?_ Lucius wondered, slightly turning his head to the side as he stepped through the door.

From the edge of the grin Potter wore, he did. And didn't care. He didn't have to, with his ability to defend himself.

Theodore's back was stiff in front of them as he paced down the corridor of staring portraits and gaping statues. Lucius forbore to look behind him. He was afraid he might lose control of his chuckle again if he did.

They ended up in a large sitting room that faced the sunrise. The walls were less elegant than the walls of the simple room they had spoken to Zabini in, but Lucius appreciated the interweave of white and gold on them anyway. Theodore waved Lucius to one of the two chairs in the room, and took the other.

Lucius had sat before he wondered what Potter would do. As it was, Potter simply began to wander around the room, head tilted back as if he wanted to admire the number of panes of glass in the window.

Theodore stiffened when Potter glided behind his chair, but he was the one who had chosen this result. And Lucius had to admit to some curiosity to what would happen should Theodore be more unsettled than he was simply by receiving them.

"Will you take refreshment?" Theodore asked Lucius. He hadn't given guest-right to Potter, so technically he didn't have to give him anything to eat.

On the other hand, he also couldn't prevent Lucius from sharing his food with Potter, if he wanted. Lucius was starting to think that might be interesting. "Yes. I would like a large cup of pumpkin juice and a smaller one of milk."

That got him a blank stare, but Lucius was as devoted to his own games as ever the Dark Lord had been. He stared back blandly, and Theodore finally turned and spoke the order at the fireplace. It would reach the kitchens from there, Lucius knew. Nott house-elves were ever awake and alert and listening for their masters' orders.

"Now," said Theodore, turning back to Lucius. "I won't ask you to get into business until you've finished eating, but I _would_ like a hint of what you came to discuss with me."

"Of course," said Lucius. "It is a subject that the Ministry has so far refused to act on, and which is dear to Potter's heart." He sat back and waited for Theodore to figure it out.

Theodore sat up. He had attained an impressive height, but none of the lithe muscle Potter had to support his own. "This is about Mudbloods? No. I won't listen. You're not welcome in my house, Potter," he added, turning his head so that he was facing him just as Potter paused to admire a black shell sitting on a bookshelf. "Get _out_."

Potter cocked his head. Lucius waited, wondering if Potter would loudly and perhaps fatally—to their cause—object, but he only looked as though he was wondering what Theodore was objecting to. "Very well," he said, while flames briefly skipped across his shoulders. He strode towards the sitting room door.

Lucius waited until Potter had nearly reached it, then stood himself. Half of politics was about timing.

"Since my negotiating partner is not welcome here," he told Theodore, "then I consider myself unwelcome as well."

Potter had paused. Lucius didn't look at him. He would start to smile at either Potter's expression or his own badly leashed amusement, and neither was effective in getting Theodore to pay attention.

"I haven't revoked your guest-right, though!" Theodore bobbed up and stared at him. "I didn't mean _you_ had to leave!"

"But we came to you together. Why did you not think we would depart together?"

Theodore stared at him without responding, before turning an angry step to the side and snapping a finger at Potter. "What did you _do_ to him? The Lucius Malfoy I knew bowed to no one!"

"Then perhaps you didn't know that Lucius Malfoy very well," Potter said calmly. He didn't look at Lucius, either. His attention was focused past him, on Theodore. "He agreed to be my negotiating partner to try and change the wizarding world's attitudes towards Muggleborns. I appreciate that."

Theodore shook his head. "I've heard that being around you can make people act—different. Not themselves. Sometimes Unspeakables talk about magic addiction. Would you know anything about that?"

Potter's flames grew perhaps a centimeter in size. Lucius said, his voice a shade too cool, "Thank you for doubting my ability to see when I am under magical influence and thinking that I would make decisions because of it, Theodore."

"I'm just trying to understand, Mr. Malfoy." Theodore spun around to face him, the fastest and least graceful person in the world. "I know Draco would never forgive me if I didn't at least _ask_ you if you were all right!"

"I am more than all right," Lucius said, and moved away from the hand that Theodore tried to touch him with. "Thank you for proving that you're not interested in changing the attitude pure-bloods have towards Muggleborns. That was all I was curious about."

"Me, as well," said Potter, and nodded. "Let's go, Lucius." He started out again, and Lucius started after him.

"They're _Mudbloods._ Why do you care?"

Lucius looked over his shoulder, answered, "Because I can see the shape of the future," and continued walking.

He heard Theodore's quick footsteps behind him and sidestepped automatically, but he had thought Theodore was aiming for Potter. He didn't expect the young man to skid to a stop in front of him and aim his wand.

"I'll _prove_ that this isn't you!" Theodore cried, and snapped out something that wasn't the simple _Finite Incantatem_ Lucius had thought it would be. " _Conieco catenam!_ "

The spell sped towards him, and Lucius knew he wouldn't be able to avoid it. He also knew the sensation he would go through when it struck him was intensely painful. The Chain-Shattering Charm was meant to free a wizard from "unsavory influences"—and it would try to do so even when those influences didn't exist.

Then a shield manifested around him before the spell could hit. Lucius heard the hissing and spitting of what sounded like an enraged cobra, and he reeled back when the shield around him contracted inwards and focused around his skin. It brushed him with familiar heat.

Lucius turned his head to meet Potter's eyes, rather than Theodore's, and saw his hand twitch a little by his side before he nodded.

"The protective spells I put on my negotiating partner could have broken your wand," Potter told Theodore. "I'm glad they didn't, but you ought to _consider_ before using magic like that."

Theodore backed a single step away, and then said, "Get out," again, in a voice with no conviction.

"We were," Potter said. "Why you chose to prevent us from going, I don't know." He moved his shoulder once at Lucius, and then walked out the front doors, his magic softly snapping behind him.

"I would consider political neutrality on this cause, rather than opposition," Lucius told Theodore, and followed Potter. The sense of heaviness in the air, and the shimmer of heat, would have guided him even if he hadn't known where Potter would inevitably walk.

When they were outside, Lucius reached out and placed an arm in the air in front of Potter. Potter looked at him.

"I know you didn't place protective spells on me. I would have noticed you casting them." Lucius knew _that_. After years of fighting in wars, he had cast a spell on himself that let him notice when a wand was pointing at him, even if it was from behind or the side.

Potter smiled. "You're right. I draped you in my magic instead, a few days ago, when I realized how useful you would prove."

Lucius blinked. He had no words. Control of raw magic distant from one's body was uncommon, and perhaps only possible because Potter's power snapped and growled around him like a barely tame pet anyway.

"I thought you'd like to know," Potter added, and held out his arm to Apparate Lucius to their next interview.

A second later, Lucius took it. And if he watched Potter's face rather than the way he drew his wand to Apparate them, well, that was his privilege.

 _Rather like draping me in magic was his._


	4. Ripples of Reaction

Thank you again for all the reviews!

 _Chapter Four—Ripples of Reaction_

"You're _really_ trying to change the world with Lucius Malfoy," said Hermione, and she put the papers in front of her aside and gave Harry her full attention.

Harry sipped a little at the glass of sour lemon water he'd requested from Hermione's free house-elf, Mara. Where she'd found one like Dobby who wanted to earn money and wear clothes, Harry didn't know; Hermione was keeping the name of Mara's former family secret because it was hot evidence in an upcoming case. Harry did wonder, a bit, whether profiting from the labor of a free house-elf was any better than an enslaved one, but that wasn't the kind of issue he would raise with Hermione.

They'd become better at respecting each other's tender places over the years. Harry stayed away from them, and Hermione didn't lecture.

Now, she looked too dazed to lecture. Harry nodded and said, "I told you I would, you know."

"Yes, but I thought Malfoy would never agree. That son of his certainly never would."

"From what he tells me, dear Draco's a bloody disappointment," Harry said, and went gleefully on before Hermione could do more than offer him a half-hearted glare for his language. "Not as deep a thinker as his father. Lucius wants to leave him with a comfortable inheritance and so on, of course, but he's doing what he does more for the sake of the future intelligent children Draco might have than for Draco himself."

"And you call him Lucius."

"Yes." Harry leaned forwards. "I think that you know exactly why he agreed to help me, Hermione. He's an immensely practical man. All I had to do was offer him evidence that it was more pragmatic to help me than to oppose me, and—this is more important—an ally powerful enough to make it worthwhile stirring himself on Muggleborns' behalf rather than remaining at the Wizengamot's side."

"So he's using you as much as you're using him."

"Yes, you could put it that way."

Hermione sighed a little. "I did disbelieve he would help you, because I thought he was more like Draco. His prejudice matters more to him than good sense or politics or anything else, you know that."

Harry nodded silently. Draco had done things like go up to Hermione two days after the end of the Death Eater trials—the trials in which Harry had testified to keep the Malfoys out of Azkaban—and call her a Mudblood. In public. While Rita Skeeter was in earshot. Then he had acted shocked at the resulting storm of outrage. The wizarding world _had_ changed enough that that kind of thing wasn't going to pass when the person insulted was a war hero.

"Draco didn't inherit the political instincts, for some reason. You can imagine how dismayed Lucius is." Harry smirked a little when Hermione gave him a blank look. "Well, maybe you can't. But the point is, Lucius thinks of this as doing something good for his son and the pure-bloods in the end. They'll live in a world where they're better-positioned in the way Lucius thinks they should be, even if they don't see it right now."

"That means he might be interested in turning aside from the goal once it's achieved?"

"Do you know how long it'll take to achieve?"

"I don't think anyone knows that." Hermione looked down at the stack of parchments in her lap. "Any more than anyone knows how long it would take to free house-elves."

Harry nodded. "That means that Lucius is committed to this for the long term. Not just a few months. Probably not just even a few years. I can't see him turning aside from something he's invested that much effort into."

Hermione exhaled slowly. "That's true. I suppose I find it hard to trust him because he served Voldemort, and then denied he did, and then went back, and now he's rebuilding a new image. Can you really trust someone who turns his back on his allegiances so often?"

"I trust him to be practical," Harry repeated. "And compromising with the Muggleborns is the most practical course for any pure-blood family right now. And we already have our first ally."

Hermione's mouth fell open a little. "What? Did he manage to convince Draco to ally with you after all?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't think he'll approach him, from what he's told me about Draco. No, it was Blaise Zabini. His mother's in Italy, but he seems to have control of finances of his own."

"Well, of _course_ he does. If you paid attention to the gossip columns, then you'd know he has all these Galleons from a lawsuit he won for slander…"

Harry listened with half an ear, glad that Hermione hadn't become enraged when it turned out that he was really going to use Lucius after all.

And he wondered, with more than half his brain, what Lucius was doing at the moment.

* * *

The mirror across the room shattered, and bits of glass drifted to the floor in flakes like sharp snow. Lucius might have found it more entertaining if this wasn't the seventh time it had happened.

"Very impressive, Draco," he said, and bit his lip firmly against another yawn. His son's tantrums always made him bored, and he got sleepy when he was bored. "As is your _Reparo_. I can't see the cracks when you put it back together." He turned and flicked through the _Daily Prophet_ again. No, nothing even in the gossip pages about Harry Potter and Lucius Malfoy being seen together. A pity.

"You _can't_ ally with Potter! _Reparo! Reducto!_ "

This time, Draco's spell went awry and bent a fairly expensive golden lamp next to Lucius's seat out of shape. He glanced up and raised an eyebrow. Draco stopped and stared at him with his chest heaving like he'd been galloping.

 _Maybe it would be best to think of him that way. As a handsome, pedigreed, soft-brained Abraxan._

Lucius smiled a little at the article in front of him. At one time, that thought would have been so painful that he would not have entertained it. But it would have remained there subconsciously, making him miserable.

After the war, he had decided he would not give space or time to misery, no matter how much it might be justified. He would push forwards those thoughts and make himself confront them. If they were difficult, so much the better. It would make for a greater challenge to test his strength against.

Narcissa had not agreed, especially when his disparaging thoughts concerned Draco. She had wanted to build safe walls after the war and make sure their family would never be challenged again. It was one reason they had parted ways.

"Are you even paying attention to me, Father?"

Lucius put down the paper and directed a courteous gaze at his only heir. "Now I am."

Draco's chest heaved as he stared at Lucius. Lucius tried to remember a time when he had been that young, and could not. Of course, the death of his father had forced Lucius to thread a maze of responsibilities and privileges that Draco did not have.

Lucius had assumed Draco would mature as he himself had, that the war would serve as Draco's particular test of adversity. Now he knew it would not. It was disappointing to learn so late, but at the same time, he welcomed the knowledge. He was building for future generations, and only one of them was Draco.

Lucius would give his son the comforts and lifestyle he desired, and educate his grandchildren. He was not defeated, and he was not afraid.

"When Theo Flooed me and told me, I couldn't believe it," Draco said. He was shivering a little, and he paced slowly forwards as if he was giving Lucius time to stand and bolt out of the room. Since Lucius couldn't imagine why he would wish to do so, the leisurely advance was more than a little absurd.

"He _told_ me," Draco continued, "that Potter kept him from trying to disenchant you."

"Of course he did," said Lucius, leaning back in his seat and considering Draco. His son had clearer eyes than he had had in a long time. Lucius liked that. Perhaps his outrage over Potter had sharpened Draco's mind instead of clouding it. That would be a pleasant result. "I did not need disenchantment."

Draco halted. "But Theo didn't know that," he said, as if it was impossible that there was something Theodore Nott didn't know.

Lucius sighed. "I did try to tell him, with words and subtly, that Potter and I are allied now. Is it my fault if he did not believe me?"

"You can't be allied with Potter."

 _I am tired of this refrain._ Lucius leaned forwards. "You will do me two favors, Draco. You will not speak those words again. And when Potter comes to visit here, you will be courteous to him."

"I'll say whatever I like. Because you've disgraced the name of Malfoy." Draco had his arms folded so tightly that his fingers were digging into the flesh of his elbow. "Why would you ally with one of our greatest enemies, a half-blood who—"

"You told me not long ago that you thought our greatest enemy was the Dark Lord, and my greatest mistake was in surrendering myself to him."

Draco let his mouth fall open a little, in that transparent way he had of being startled when his father remembered something he had said. Then he shook his head and murmured, "The difference between words spoken in public and between friends, Father. I thought you would know that." He gave Lucius a hard stare. "If I'd known that you would decide to blend private and public life…"

Lucius was silent, contemplating. He had thought his son had changed his mind on some opinions that might have been excusable in the old world, but were unforgivable in the new one.

No. He had learned to moderate his tongue, but not his mind.

Lucius's last hope that Draco might accept his alliance with Potter died a soft death. He shook his head at Draco and said, "I think of the long-term survival of our family, you only of the short-term. It is unfortunate." He stood. "From now on, if you meet with Theodore Nott, it will not be in this house. And I will have your promise."

" _Father._ You can't make me."

Lucius knew that tone. Really, the "can't" was a "won't" in Draco's head. And he looked shocked, but not as much as he would have if he believed what Lucius had said.

Lucius regarded him evenly, and Draco's shock splintered into the true emotion. He shook his head and opened his mouth further, but no sound came out, because he had none.

"Your promise." Lucius made his voice gentle, like first snowfall.

"I—you're saying I'm only living here on your _sufferance_. That I have no independence at all!"

Draco's voice was rising. Lucius found it tiresome. What he thought of most was how Potter would have reacted, calm and collected and confident in his magic, that it could destroy Lucius if he turned out to be a threat.

Draco was not as magically powerful as Potter, but Lucius had tried to raise him to be as confident, to take pleasure and comfort from the political manipulations the Malfoys were so good at. But without _skill_ , Draco was denied that comfort.

"I'm saying you have no independence because you will permit yourself none," Lucius said, cutting off the tirade before it could form. "You have not struck back at me, or tried to live on your own, or built up a political base in the Ministry different from mine. You have lived here on my sufferance, yes, and assumed it would extend to any suffering you chose to make me undergo."

Draco stared at him, baffled.

"I have an ally. This ally will gain us power for the sake of a little humility now. Can you put up with it?"

"Not when it's _Potter_."

Lucius tilted his head. Draco was not without secrets of his own. Perhaps Draco and Potter had had interactions more recent than the trials that Lucius didn't know about, and Potter hadn't seen fit to mention. "What has he done since Hogwarts to make you dislike him so much?"

Again he got the baffled glare. The one that said there were depths in Draco's mind that he would never touch. Well, Lucius didn't think of them as depths as much as shallows, but he still wanted to know what they meant, and he waited until Draco sniffed and said, "Nothing. But he did plenty _in_ Hogwarts."

"You're twenty years old now, Draco," said Lucius, and made his tone patient instead of coaxing. Draco didn't respond well to either, but better to the first. "Don't you think it's time to give up on a petty schoolboy rivalry? Potter has."

"Potter thinks himself so far above me that he wouldn't see fit to continue the rivalry anyway!"

"Yes, perhaps not," said Lucius. "Which ought to be a greater spur to you to _move past it_."

"The way he humiliated me—the way he beat me on the Quidditch pitch and the way he stood up at the trial and said that he couldn't believe I'd really done any harm in the war because I was just a _child_ —"

"It seems," Lucius interrupted, a revelation trembling through him like a crystal wineglass swayed by wind, "we have both been under an illusion, mistaking diplomatic words for the real thing."

Draco broke off and blinked at him. "What?"

"I thought you had changed your mind about Muggleborns because you didn't say the word 'Mudblood' in public anymore. You thought Potter despised you because he twisted his words to make sure that you didn't get a harsh sentence." Lucius shook his head. "Well, hopefully we shall be the stronger for having our eyes opened so painlessly."

"He didn't—he wasn't trying to make sure I didn't get a _harsh sentence_ —"

"Yes, he was." Lucius sighed at the look of absolute blank amazement on his son's face. "You didn't understand? You thought he hated you?"

"Of course he does."

"By making the Wizengamot think of you as a child, he kept you out of Azkaban," said Lucius. He kept his tone slow and soft, the way he would talk to a Kneazle who was poised to scratch. It was the only way he could make sure Draco understood. "It was perhaps an ungraceful tactic, but it served two purposes. It softened them at the time, and it cast no shadow on your future efforts. You could make them think that you grew up later, a natural maturation brought about by your own actions."

Left unsaid in his soft tone was the fact that Draco hadn't needed to worry about that. Draco seemed to sense what his father was thinking anyway. He bristled and stood up with his arms thrust out in front of him to push something unseen away.

"You don't need to ally with Potter to get the glory of our name back," Draco said.

"I agree."

Draco checked on whatever he was about to say, and eyed his father for a moment. Lucius smiled blandly back. He couldn't help thinking that having to pause and _think_ about what he was going to say would help Draco a lot more than he thought it would right now.

"But allying with Potter will make our family name stronger in times to come. And strength is less easily won than glory." Lucius stood. "I will have your promises now, Draco."

Draco squinted at him. Then he said, "I _won't._ " And he left the room, using the determined stalk that he always did when he thought he had won at something.

Lucius shook his head slowly, and then went to his study to Floo Potter. He paused while the flames turned green, and raised one hand slowly to his shoulder, wondering if he was imagining the sensation he could feel there.

No. He hadn't been imagining it. Velvet fur pushed impatiently against his hand. The sensation of Potter's magic draped lightly around his shoulders, and hanging down his back, was real.

Lucius was still smiling when the Floo revealed a face. But it was Ron Weasley's, not Potter's. Lucius tempered his smile to the sane one he would use when speaking with many of his allies in the Ministry, and asked, "Is Harry Potter there?"

Weasley stared at him in silence for long enough that Lucius was about to repeat his request. Then Weasley sighed and said, "I suppose I don't have any choice but to believe him if you're here," and went away with a tragic shake of his head.

Potter's face appeared in the next second. His brows rose. "Lucius? Is something wrong?"

"My son is a fool, and you should guard yourself when you come here."

He didn't need to explain any more than that, not for someone as sharp as Potter. Potter cocked his head and nodded once. "All right," he said. "I will. It might be better not to meet at Malfoy Manor unless we have to."

"I agree." Lucius watched him with eyes that he couldn't keep the desire out of, although Potter might mistake it for the desire of power. "And I feel that your magic is here, still keeping watch on me?"

"Of course. It's a detached piece, rather like a cloak I've given you."

 _Given, not lent._ Lucius couldn't keep his smile away. "You value me that much."

Potter looked at him with those honest green eyes, always so stunning after a short time of not seeing them. "Of course. Someone would have to be mad not to value you, Lucius. I thought you knew that."

"I am, perhaps, more used to the implicit than the explicit valuation," Lucius murmured.

"Well, someone should correct that," said Potter.

Lucius leaned in. Perhaps it was unwise, but no one was here save the two of them, and he was in a protected house. "Will you?" he asked.

Potter cocked his head back, as sharp and searching as a hunting bird. Then he smiled. "That is something we might discuss, Lucius," he said.

The Floo closed.

Lucius leaned slowly back and touched the silky nap of the magic cloak Potter had wrapped in him again. He had to smile—had to—and it was wonderful.

" _Something we might discuss" is more than I ever thought I would have again._


	5. Before the Wizengamot

Thank you again for all the reviews!

 _Chapter Five—Before the Wizengamot_

"The Wizengamot calls Mr. Harry Potter to speak."

Harry stood and moved forwards at once. He could see as many eyes fastened on him from among the witnesses—this wasn't a trial, but an open audience, so anyone could come watch who wanted to—as there were from the Wizengamot. He spent a moment wondering how many of their owners wanted him to fail.

In the end, he shrugged a single shoulder and took his place at the little speaker's podium in front of the overwhelming wrought iron gallery. What mattered was making his plans sound so good and so sensible that _no_ one would want them to fail.

"Mr. Potter." That was a tall, stately witch with white hair as long as Dumbledore's beard used to be. Harry knew her name was Juniper Mackle, but part of his brain persisted in thinking of her as Madam Mackerel. "Why should we consider passing these laws and making these investigations? Your _central_ reason, please. Laid out as clearly as possible."

Harry nodded once. He had hoped someone would ask him a question like that, and Mackle was one of their staunchest allies if they could prove themselves. She was only against stretching out her neck for a position no one else would support.

"Yes, Madam. I think Muggleborns' families should be investigated partially for the sake of the wizarding world. The earlier they know about magic, the less chance that their families will blurt out something in shock later, and the better they'll hide the magic. This way, they'll have years to get used to keeping the secret."

"Only partially for the sake of the wizarding world, though." Mackle leaned her arms on the edge of the gallery.

"Yes, Madam. The other part is to prevent things like this from happening."

Harry had decided early one that he would do something like his next tactic. He had discussed it once with Lucius, and Lucius had told him that it was his own business. But he would be sitting there with a faint frown now, Harry thought. Maybe he disapproved of shocking the Wizengamot.

 _He'll get used to it,_ Harry thought cheerfully, and whipped away the left sleeve of his robe, showing the long, pale scar arching along the underside of his arm where Dudley had cut him with a rusty piece of iron.

Some people leaned forwards to stare. For the ones who sat far enough away that they would have trouble seeing, Harry helpfully conjured a magnifying glass, enlarged it, and then moved it slowly down his arm with his free hand. He could see the way mouths tightened and people gasped and exchanged significant glances.

"This is one of the scars that you earned from your reprehensible treatment at the hands of your Muggle relatives," said Mackle.

It wasn't a question, which let Harry answer without pause, although he thought the word "earned" odd. "It is. And I would make sure that the same thing never happens to another Muggleborn child at the hands of their own family." He swept the room with his gaze. "Would anyone here speak against that cause?"

"We would when we don't know if it would mean accusing innocent people," said a woman named Hecuba Jackson. She had a hat so enormous that Harry could only compare it to the one Neville's Boggart had worn when he put it in his grandmother's clothes. "It is awful that you suffered, Mr. Potter, but we must make sure others do not also suffer."

Harry blinked slowly. "And that's what I'm trying to do."

"No! If you are suggesting we accuse parents who might not have done anything of—"

"I was talking about the children. Who may be abused or may not, but who aren't served by the Ministry sitting back and remaining ignorant of their situations!"

Lucius was suddenly standing at his side, even though they had discussed their strategy and Harry knew he was most definitely going to speak first. He twisted to stare at Lucius for a minute. Then he heard the echoes of his own challenge ringing in the air, and nodded. It was time to sit down when he started raising his voice.

He retreated to sit down in the chair he'd barely warmed that morning before he had to take the floor. And he watched as Lucius gave a smile to Mackle and Jackson and so many of the others that he'd already warmed _them_ up before he even started speaking.

 _Sometimes I wonder if I should learn to seduce people without words like that,_ Harry thought idly, and then he shook his head. No, it would take a certain magic that had nothing to do with wands if he wanted to do that. He would have had to live longer and not have his scars and probably even be a pure-blood.

Still, he'd done the second best thing to having it himself by securing someone who _did_ have it. Harry sat back and prepared to enjoy hearing Lucius swirl them all around.

* * *

 _I warned him against showing his scars. No one here deserves to see them._

But Lucius had learned not to waste moments in regrets. He gave a half-bow to Madam Jackson and said, "No one could accuse me of being overly friendly to Muggleborns in the last few years. But in this case, I cannot help seconding my esteemed colleague's opinion. We have no idea about the proportions of abused children because _no_ one has any idea when it comes to this."

Lucius could see the ripples of calm that his words spread through the audience, the way that hands patted hair and heads nodded along with his words without realizing what they approved. Speech was magic. Calling Potter a "colleague" granted him a different kind of importance than any other word Lucius could have used to refer to him. And he could sound calmer, which gave the Wizengamot the impression that all emotions and consequences were under control here.

"We might still have to wonder about impetuous accusations of parents if Mr. Potter was part of the process," said Herman Witters, a Wizengamot member Lucius had always disliked. He seemed to think he should succeed in politics better than he had because of his neatly trimmed white hair and bright blue eyes. A resemblance to Albus Dumbledore was no longer the political tool it had once been, after Skeeter's biography. "We should have someone else oversee it."

"I agree we should," Lucius said smoothly, to make Witters think Lucius agreed with the whole of his proposal while confining it, for someone attentive to his words, to the last part. Potter hadn't stirred behind him. Lucius had to admire his self-control. "That is why we need a Wizengamot committee."

"Not a Ministry one?"

That was Mackle. Lucius turned to her with a faint smile. "Mr. Potter has already done all he could to gauge the Ministry's interest, and to raise it, and to prompt it when they hesitated. They have given him every excuse from lack of time to lack of interest. I think I can say that the members of the Wizengamot, based on your voices in this chamber, at least do not suffer from the latter—reason."

Lucius felt several of them, perhaps even a majority, filling in his discreet pause with a different word than "reason." Mackle and Witters looked thoughtful; Jackson was nodding; even several others Lucius had thought they would have more opposition from seemed drawn in.

But then Witters asked, "What part are you going to play, Mr. Potter?"

Part of their strategy had involved only one of them speaking at the same time, smoothly alternating, acting equally. Lucius still didn't step aside when Potter rose to come back to the podium. Strategies regularly needed adapting.

Besides, he wanted to be close enough to plant an elbow in Potter's ribs if his voice rose again, or he had the urge to show someone another scar.

 _Keep them covered. They are not badges of shame, but only certain people should ever see them._

* * *

"I would like to advise people on what signs to look for," Harry said. He could feel Lucius's warmth from this close. He kept his gaze on the Wizengamot, though. They were the ones he had to convince. Lucius had unexpectedly turned into a passionate spokesman for the cause.

 _Well, the skill isn't unexpected, or I wouldn't have picked him to help me develop this. But the passion is._

"For example," Harry said, "someone entering my relatives' home might not have thought I was abused. I wasn't in the photographs of their family, but then, a casual visitor wouldn't have known they had another child living there. The barred window of the room I stayed in from the time I was eleven didn't look out over the front. The cupboard I slept in _before_ I was eleven didn't have any signs on the outside to distinguish it. I was skinny, to some people, not starving. Part of the reason my relatives weren't arrested by Muggles for child abuse was that they looked normal and didn't draw attention to themselves. I'd like to teach investigators to look past the smooth, shiny surface."

"You can't know whether all the surfaces will be smooth and shiny," said Jackson at once.

Harry smiled at her a little. One thing his enemies didn't seem to understand was how easily they played into his tactics. "Exactly. Because we don't know enough to say how common that is. But where the cases of abuse are open and unapologetic, I would hope that the Wizengamot would take immediate action."

Silence for a second, as Jackson obviously struggled to find some reply. Then Lucius smoothly took up the cause again. "The biggest drag on our good intentions at the moment is our lack of knowledge. When we organize investigative teams that can enter the homes of Muggleborn parents and look around, then we will begin to eliminate that, and learn how necessary Mr. Potter's instruction is."

Harry held himself back from a lot he wanted to say. In the end, the important thing was those Muggleborn children, not how much he got involved. This was bigger than him. If he could step back in the end, or had to step back because too many people on the investigative teams were wary and wouldn't work with him, well, he could live with that.

"There's the problem of scale," someone else, a new Wizengamot member Harry didn't know, began.

After that, more arguments started on how they would organize the teams, how many they needed, how they would decide which Muggleborns' families needed to be visited first—most of them seemed to favor starting with children near Hogwarts age—and how they would explain the magical world. Harry slowly breathed when he thought no one could hear him. The Wizengamot had cleared the first barrier, the acceptance of the necessity of the teams in the first place, with less trouble than he'd thought they would.

He felt a hand on his elbow, and started. It was Lucius, though, who bent down as though solicitously, and wound up hissing in his ear, "Come back with me to Malfoy Manor tonight."

"Draco might be there," Harry said, the first thing on his mind the warning Lucius had given him about Draco three nights ago.

Lucius said nothing for a moment. Then he said, "I suppose you would object to having me in your house this early in our acquaintance?"

Harry muffled his laughter. It might make the Wizengamot start paying attention to them again, and that would be a problem. "Technically we've known each other for years. Yes, come if you like. Perhaps at five?" It was two now, and the Wizengamot was supposed to move on to discussing something else by three. That should leave Harry at least a few hours to unwind in private before Lucius visited.

"Perhaps later." Lucius eyed him for a moment. "I will need some time to clean up."

That left Harry some more time himself. He smiled. He wasn't sure whether Lucius had done this more for himself or for both of them, but he appreciated the gesture. "Very well. I'll see you then. You know the Apparition coordinates?"

"I imagine most people do, since the _Prophet_ chose to publish the location of your house."

Harry rolled his eyes. "All right, but come in slowly. You'll have to give me time to lower some of the defensive spells."

"You're protected well, then." Lucius relaxed a little. "Good. I would hate to lose a promising ally so close to the beginning of our journey."

Mackle asked a question, perhaps because she'd noticed that they weren't paying attention to her, and Harry faded into the background. He watched mostly in silence as Lucius fielded the questions, only adding a bit of information when someone spoke to him directly.

 _This is one of the best decisions I've ever made._

* * *

Lucius found himself gazing at the protective shimmer of the spells around Potter's home perhaps ten minutes after five. It was better to be on time than early, but he had wanted to give Potter enough time to lower them completely.

And as it turned out, the extra minutes spent studying them were well worth it.

Lucius had seen protective spells that resembled fences, and ones that resembled nets, and some that were interwoven in wild patterns guided by the weaver's force of mind, which might or might not be sane. They were often beautiful, although the plain ones like stone walls less so. But he had never seen ones like these.

They resembled trees. The trees were shades of green and silver and gold, mingled in their trunks and leaves. They stood so close together that they flowed into one another and grew in double boles, or they stood far apart enough from each other that only their outermost branches touched. But that didn't matter. Always, they were close enough that the magic leaped and flickered and danced as a barrier between them.

Lucius was almost sorry when Potter lowered the protective spells enough to drain them into the earth, or, as Lucius saw happening because of the form they took, opening a path into his lovely forest wide enough for Lucius to walk down. Lucius inclined his head to his silent audience and moved down the path. He heard the crackle of energy behind him as the branches reconnected.

The energy that brushed against him was as velvety as the "cloak" Potter had draped around him. Lucius stroked it again, and kept moving forwards, over a small patch of bare earth that turned into a garden as he walked, as the protective spells swirled around him and dropped illusions that Potter had cleverly woven right into them.

Lucius smiled a little as he looked at the calm pools and splashing fountains among the huge beds of flowers, red and gold and silver, a variation on the color of the protective spells. It resembled the estates of many older pure-blood houses. Lucius wondered if Potter had done it on purpose or simply found it beautiful.

The path he was on curved several times, like a snake, which made good defensive sense, before ending up at the door of the house. Potter leaned out and nodded to Lucius, smiling a little as he watched Lucius study the flowers. "Pretty, right? I got some advice from Kreacher on what to plant. Apparently this is what the Black gardens used to look like."

"I did not think the Blacks would plant this many red and yellow flowers," Lucius remarked, as he took off his cloak. Potter whisked it onto a peg with a spell and motioned him inside the house. It felt smaller than it looked, with thick dark colors on the walls, rooms crowded with furniture, and one low fire. Lucius found he could still see well enough to avoid hitting his shins, which was all he cared about.

Potter laughed, a low sound that made Lucius turn towards him with more attention even than he had intended to pay. "I _might_ have changed the colors, and only relied on Kreacher for placement advice," he said. "Tea?"

Lucius shook his head. "I would prefer something more substantial."

"Oh?" Potter sounded surprised. "I can make dinner a bit early, I suppose. I have everything I need for it. I just wasn't intending to eat until later."

"Until after I leave?" Lucius smiled into the silence that followed. "And please do not worry about pleasing my palate. Whatever you have will be fine."

Potter narrowed his eyes. "I wasn't worried about _pleasing your palate._ God, what a way to put it."

Lucius put his hands together on top of his cane and watched Potter with a small smile as he turned to the kitchen with another roll of his eyes and began to enchant plates into flying from the cupboards and bread into toasting and knives into slicing fruit. This was the man who took advice from house-elves but obviously had none of them serving him.

And his political ally, and someone Lucius was moving slowly closer to considering more than that.

He had wondered if Potter could be more than that before now, of course. But he had thought it might damage the smoothness of their political relationship if they came together and then fell apart. Lucius could ignore personal feelings towards his allies, but he was not sure Potter could.

 _And this is a man and a subject on which it would be difficult to remain neutral, even for me,_ Lucius admitted to himself, as he watched Potter spread butter on a pile of scones, doing it with his own hands and knife instead of his wand this time.

Potter glanced at him only once. There was suspicion in his eyes, and intrigue at the same time. He didn't appear to know exactly what Lucius was doing, but to want to find out.

 _That he will,_ Lucius thought, and accepted what he had probably known, in part of him, would be the final step since he had read Potter's letter proposing an alliance.

But right now, his stomach _was_ rumbling, and more to the point, so was Potter's.

 _After dinner._


	6. After Dinner

Thank you again for all the reviews!

 _Chapter Six—After Dinner_

Harry watched Lucius put down his soup spoon, and felt a moment's grudging respect. Lucius had wanted to come here in the first place, and Harry had assumed he had something important to discuss. But Lucius hadn't slurped his soup, or hurried through his meal, or done anything else to show that he was impatient.

Harry hadn't been so polite. He tore off the last scrap of bread and tossed it into his mouth, then stood up. "Do you want a drink?"

"Only if you have refined Firewhisky. And I don't suppose you do?"

Harry snorted and relaxed before Lucius's raised eyebrows. "Of course not. I have better things to spend my money on than a drink that costs half a month's pay for most people and tastes like horse piss set on fire."

Lucius laughed at that, and Harry was surprised. It wasn't that good a joke. "Then you have tasted it. But over time, some acquire the taste." He smiled at Harry and moved so he was in a comfortable chair by the fire, but not the most comfortable, the one Harry usually took. "Water will do if you have an uncontrollable desire to slake my thirst."

Harry, about to Summon a glass that he could fill with an _Aguamenti_ charm, paused. Lucius had said the words in an ordinary tone of voice, as far as he could make out. But still, there was something there, an edge, that hadn't been there during his few words of dinner conversation.

Harry Summoned the glass and conjured the water anyway, because he had promised. Presumably Lucius would get to his business sooner or later.

He handed Lucius the glass, and he drank in small, neat sips that brought a smile to Harry's face. Lucius asked without anything more than a tipped-up eyebrow what was funny.

"You just have much better manners than I do," Harry said. He remembered his last trip to the Leaky Cauldron with Ron and winced. "I've been reliably informed that I sound like a dog trying to get the last drops out of its bowl."

Lucius didn't smile, but he did put down the glass and watch Harry calmly, attentively. "I know what I want," he said. "I learned manners because my parents wished me to, and they used to be more important in casual interactions than they are now. Now my main use for them is political, but they're too close to the bone for me to give them up."

Harry nodded. "I know. I didn't mean I wanted you to be rude—"

Lucius held up a hand. Harry fell silent again, and Lucius gave him a smile as faint as winter sunlight. "So. Manners have only an indirect influence on what I came here to discuss." He leaned across the distance between their chairs and tugged Harry's left sleeve back. The gesture was so unexpected that Harry let him, and then sat there looking down as Lucius traced a finger along the scar he'd shown the Wizengamot earlier that day.

Harry gasped and shivered. The feeling was like the pulling around a cut, except this time, it was pleasurable.

Lucius looked up into his eyes, letting his finger stay on the bottom of the scar. "I did not think you should show them this."

"I r-remember that." Harry cursed himself for the stutter. "I didn't understand why."

"Because they would not understand," Lucius said, and Harry nodded, feeling a stab of disappointment at the pragmatic answer. "And because I am the only one who should see them." He bent down and slid his tongue out of his mouth as casually as he had when he was drinking his water from the glass, licking up along the scar.

Harry had never been dizzy with how hard he was, but he was now. He reached out and grabbed Lucius's hair, yanking. Lucius bent with the motion, but didn't take his mouth away from Harry's arm.

Harry pulled again, and this time Lucius turned to face him, his eyes calm and his face brilliant with the smile that wasn't there but could be. "Why?" Harry asked, holding back the stutter that wanted to appear in his speech by sheer force of will. "This isn't—some plan of seduction. I know it. So what do you want?"

* * *

 _Ah, he still thinks of the politics first. Well, it makes sense that he would._

Since Potter—Harry, Lucius thought he would call him from now on—had touched his hair, Lucius did the same, curling a crisp black tangle around his finger. He smiled a little when he found the magic invested in it. It made sense that Harry's hair would be hard for him to brush if he had that much power leaking out. It had to go somewhere, and some went into making his head untamable.

"I want to express my attraction to you," Lucius said. "It is brought about by the plans we have made together, but not wholly born of them. Or because of them." He took Harry's hand, moved back a little, and kissed the palm, firmly holding Harry's eyes. There was a faint scar on the palm, too, and something rougher than that on the back. Lucius would find out where those had come from. "And I want to sleep with you. You don't look as if you would object."

For a moment, Harry let his lips flutter, and Lucius absorbed the sight as greedily as he had the image of the scar. And then Harry frowned a little and looked at him with disappointingly clear eyes.

"There are two things you should know," he said. "Well, three. First, I don't intend to let this interfere with our plans at all."

"Of course not. If we have a personal quarrel, I would expect to move past it to focus on our goals, and I would expect the same from you."

Harry nodded. "Good. The other two things are that I haven't found a man attractive before, and I haven't slept with anyone."

Lucius paused. He could feel the jumping of his cheek muscles as though someone had catapulted a Stunning Curse past him. Enough to make him stare, not enough to make his jaw drop.

Even though he would have liked to. He had made choices long ago that made it impossible, however.

"How?" he asked, and trailed another finger over the scar on Harry's arm, for the pleasure of watching him arch.

But his eyes remained bright and calm and steady, and focused on Lucius, and he answered the right question out of the many he could have thought Lucius was asking. "There was the war. And everyone telling me I had certain expectations to fulfill, and nightmares of Voldemort, and constant classwork, and death, and grief. Then, since the war, there's been the trials, and the struggle to try and get Muggleborns the same rights as pure-bloods, and lately this cause. I spent three months _alone_ trying to persuade the Ministry that they should really monitor the homes Muggleborn children come from more consistently. And it's only been two years since the war."

Harry looked at him suddenly like a hawk, which Lucius would have admired ordinarily, but not when he wanted that person to be panting with pleasure. "Can you accept that I'm that young? Only twenty. That's something you haven't mentioned, but I reckon it would deter people more determined than you."

* * *

Lucius was silent. Harry waited. It felt as though someone had taken his heart out of his chest, stretched it, and then put it back inside.

It hadn't beaten this way before. But Harry was sure he would survive if Lucius decided that the burden of initiating a twenty-year-old virgin was too much to take on.

It would hurt, but what didn't?

Lucius finally answered softly, his eyes almost abstracted, as though he was seeing something besides Harry. "There is _no_ one more determined than me."

Harry managed to smile. "A funny answer, but I'll need more than that."

Lucius leaned forwards slowly. Harry would have been afraid he would fall out of his chair, but as far as he knew, that could never happen to Lucius. So he simply sat still, and after a moment, Lucius relaxed with a little cluck of his tongue.

"I am surprised that you are not yet intimate," said Lucius. He spoke the same way he had done when he was discussing the advantages of investigating Muggleborn children's homes with Harry, and Harry relaxed. This was the best possible way Lucius could have reacted, honestly. "But if you think I should find someone nearer my own age, or who has spent time before with a man…"

He reached out and caught Harry abruptly behind his neck, and pulled Harry close to him, standing as he did. Harry tensed, his magic storming around him for a second. He knew from experience it would surround him with a whirling golden pinwheel that would darken steadily as he pulled in the power to attack the one who had startled him.

"Then you are wrong," Lucius finished, and kissed him soundly.

Harry could tell Lucius knew what he was doing. That made him tense a little more, because _he_ didn't.

But Lucius didn't seem to mind, and Harry's magic relaxed as Lucius conveyed that to him. He eased Harry down into his chair again and bent over him, using his tongue in subtle movements that drove Harry mental. But he wouldn't go faster than that, not even when Harry wound his fingers in his hair.

So Harry got back at him and did the one thing that Lucius wouldn't be able to imitate. He tightened the piece of his magic he had given to protect Lucius, making him feel as if heavy, warm fur was crowding him from the sides and making his bare skin itch where it rippled against him.

Lucius drew back at once. Perhaps he had taken the power as a threat. But from the way he looked at Harry, that wasn't it.

"I am remiss," Lucius said. "If you can still concentrate hard enough to do something like that, then I am not kissing you well." He drew his wand and conjured a thick blanket, the tangible equivalent of Harry's magic, sprawling it on the floor. It was the color of a grey leopard's fur, the rosettes gleaming and shining. "Come—Harry."

The name was a challenge, a taunt, a question. Harry answered it with a tilt of his neck and a smile, and then lay down on the fur, stretching his arms over his head. The fur was wider and longer than he was. "A good choice," he murmured, as he sat up and began to strip his clothes over his head.

Lucius watched him with lazy desire, only reaching out and touching each new scar as Harry revealed it. Harry huffed warmly over his fingers. They quivered, with the barest motion. Lucius chuckled and curled up against his side the moment he was done.

"Now," he said.

" _Not_ now," Harry retorted, moving away. "Or did you forget that _you_ still have clothes on?"

From the swift glance downwards Lucius gave, Harry thought he had, and was smugly flattered. But then Lucius laughed a little and said, "Forgive me my remissness," before he leaned back to take his robes off.

"Is remissness a word?"

"Is that a question you should be asking when I'm about to give you your first sight of a bare chest?"

Harry laughed outright as he watched Lucius undo the finicky buttons with, again, small motions of his fingers. Harry reckoned he could have opened them all in a few seconds with a spell, but he enjoyed bathing in Harry's eager regard. "I've seen plenty of bare chests. Just in the context of changing after Quidditch and Ron getting careless over whether he was dressed when he wandered into the bathroom. Yours will have to be something really special to change that."

"I think it will be," said Lucius, keeping his eyes on his fingers and the buttons as though they were the most important things in the universe.

Even knowing that it was probably a tactic to make him squirm and wish for Lucius's attention back on him didn't prevent Harry from frowning. "Why?"

Lucius looked up, eyes bright with desire, and said, "Because it is _mine_ ," and then pulled his robe away.

Harry caught his breath. Because Lucius was right. A chest by itself, muscles and skin and a few old scars, wouldn't have enthralled Harry, but this was the one that breathed out Lucius's breath and gleamed with sweat caused by Harry being there in front of him and changed tempo when Harry touched it.

"Yes, it's special," Harry admitted, meeting Lucius's eyes.

Lucius smiled a little and bent down, kissing him. His hair fell around Harry's neck, and even though it tickled a bit, Harry didn't wish it away. And it was better when their bare chests touched, and the spiral forming in the middle of his groin…

"A bit slower," Harry gasped. "Or this is going to end early."

"Does it matter when it ends?" Lucius asked, between slow bites that left Harry no time to answer as he paused. "When it will repeat again?" He drew back to consider Harry with intense, unsmiling scrutiny, and then he kissed him again, and drew his head back, and pressed down.

Harry cursed a little as the spiral turned to something sharp and urgent, and he would have fought free if he hadn't believed Lucius. This would happen more than once. Which…made it all right. Lucius wouldn't laugh at him when he'd been warned, wouldn't despise Harry for letting something happen that he'd caused.

Harry yielded to the pleasure. It took longer than he'd imagined for him to arch up and shudder against Lucius, and fall back on his fur, gasping.

"There," Lucius said, in a voice so deep Harry couldn't make out the emotion in it, and then he reached down and traced his finger over Harry's groin. Harry shut his eyes hard at the impact of a nail on oversensitive skin. Lucius pulled back.

"I have some things left to teach you," Lucius said, and then he reached out and got Harry's wrist. Harry snapped back to awareness, because once again Lucius had found a scar to trace, and no one had ever told Harry they could _tingle_ so much. Then again, not many people had ever touched him on his scars. "Do this for me."

He arranged Harry's hand between them and moved so their groins touched more directly. Harry found Lucius's cock with his hand, then with his gaze as he slewed his head to the side and looked down; Lucius hadn't been wearing anything but robes. His cock was long and pale, and Lucius closed his eyes when Harry touched him. He let out a soft, long-drawn grunt as Harry gripped him and moved his hand back and forth.

"This is pretty easy," Harry said, staring up into Lucius's hazy eyes, how they fluttered and fell still and opened again. "Ron told me once how hard it was to please a woman—"

"I would prefer that you not bring your friends into bed with us." Lucius's teeth sawed on his tongue for a moment, and then he rolled to the side so he was no longer directly on top of Harry, but beside him on the fur. His breath was short and fast, which made it all the more remarkable that he could speak the long, flowing sentences he did. "In _any_ capacity."

Harry had to laugh. "All right. Then we—"

He didn't have time for any more words as Lucius rolled back and pinned both Harry's hand under his body and Harry's mouth under his. Harry gave in without a murmur, and arched his legs around Lucius's hips.

It was surprisingly nice, even given that he'd already come, rolling and rocking there and trying to make Lucius come. _Trying,_ because Lucius had an infuriating amount of control. It might have embarrassed Harry even more, but at least he'd warned Lucius about being a bloody virgin, and Lucius had gone ahead and wanted to have sex with him anyway.

And…

Lucius had pink creeping into his cheeks now. His eyelashes were fluttering, even though he also kept forcing his eyes open to focus on Harry. Then he let loose a long, low hiss and thrust harshly with his hips, and Harry felt the flood of wetness on his hand.

 _Not disgusting._ Not that Harry had spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to make love to a man, but still.

Lucius didn't collapse, even though Harry was sure the temptation would have been overwhelming for _him_. Instead, he held himself up on his arms above Harry and bent down to kiss him one more time, and then lay back beside him.

"You did not warn me of that."

"What? And you didn't warn me about cramp," Harry added, trying to shake out his wrist.

Lucius gave him an absent smile. "The way your magic pounded through me at the—moment."

"Oh, is _someone_ too shy to say the word orgasm?"

Lucius ignored that. "It was as though the blanket you gave me tightened and rolled me back and forth."

"Well, I wouldn't know about that one way or the other, because you're my first lover, remember?" Harry reached out and tapped Lucius on the nose. "I can't exactly ask other people who didn't exist about experiences they didn't have."

Lucius's breath caught hard for a second. Then he sat back and seized Harry's arm and turned it again to kiss the scar he had shown the Wizengamot.

"And only," he whispered.

Since he kissed Harry in the next second, Harry didn't think about those words right away. But when they were in bed—still with Lucius's cleaned, conjured fur wrapped around them, because it was remarkably comfortable—Harry frowned a little at the ceiling.

 _Even when this project does reach the point where Lucius is bored with it or doesn't want to delve into it anymore?_

In the end, Harry had to shake his head and close his eyes. He had ideas about what might happen tomorrow when they met with Zabini and a small crowd of "interested" people, as Zabini called them, but none about what might happen years in the future.

Lucius's arm curled over him was awfully warm, though, and Harry had enjoyed himself a lot, and Lucius kept pulling Harry back towards him whenever he rolled over in his search for a comfortable position, until at last Harry decided the most comfortable position was resting with his nose against Lucius's flank. So there was that.


	7. The First of Many Such Gatherings

Thank you again for all the reviews!

 _Chapter Seven—The First of Many Such Gatherings_

"Did something happen?"

Lucius, his eyes resting on Harry in sheer appreciation that he didn't want to hide, turned around. "I don't know what you mean, Mr. Zabini. You ought to know what's changed as well as anyone here, since you were the one who arranged this meeting."

Zabini shook his head with a faint frown. Lucius had always found him the most sensible of Draco's friends, and it was only a shame that their friendship had withered after Hogwarts, as the two of them drifted into their separate interests. "Only that you look different from the last time I saw you."

Lucius considered the options for a moment. But he did not think Harry would strive to keep this secret, and it would be better to acknowledge it than for Zabini to feel as if they had been deliberately hiding it from him. Not everyone could control his emotions as well as Lucius. "I have learned to find a different kind of joy in Mr. Potter."

Zabini blinked enough times that his eyelids looked like a fluttering pair of wings. He glanced in Harry's direction. Harry stood in front of a semicircle of chairs in the Zabinis' outdoor garden, talking to the people in them. Lucius had no idea what Zabini saw.

Lucius saw pride, and beauty, and strength leashed only by a stronger joy.

"Can you do something for me?" Zabini asked abruptly.

"Not without hearing the conditions."

Zabini, his gaze still on Harry, shook his head a little. "This isn't conditional. I just want to be there when you tell Draco. _Please_."

Lucius felt his lip quiver before he suppressed it. He inclined his head. "I do not yet know when that will be, or if rumors will make their way back to him first. But if I set up a moment to do so, I will invite you."

" _Thank_ you." Zabini's face was all glee as he opened the door of patterned glass that separated them both from Harry and nodded Lucius outside. "The house-elves will be out with refreshments in a moment."

Lucius nodded graciously to him, and walked out. The magic Harry had let him borrow seemed to tingle harder than ever as he moved towards its caster.

And then Harry looked up at him and smiled, and Lucius was no longer sure the tingles came from the magic.

* * *

 _God, he looks good._

Harry took a moment to wonder why Lucius had been so surprised about Harry not having been involved with anyone since the war. Why hadn't _Lucius_ been? Sure, his divorce from Narcissa was recent, but he looked good enough to draw all sorts of admiring glances as he walked.

It had probably been a lack of time and his own choice, though, Harry thought as Lucius came to a stop beside him and nodded to the wizards in the chairs—two retired Wizengamot members and the heads of several pure-blood families, as well as an older woman who had introduced herself as Kait Melganthe. Harry didn't yet know why she was there. She chuckled a bit as her eyes fell on Lucius, though. He hoped that meant she was friendly.

"Charmed to see you, Madam Melganthe," Lucius murmured, which increased Harry's confidence. He turned back to her and nodded.

"I don't recognize your name," Harry said. "Are you a half-blood?" It was the kind of question that most of the people he knew in politics couldn't get away with. But they _expected_ Harry Potter to be ignorant and brash and more honest than he should be, so they'd answer his questions tolerantly.

Melganthe faced him with a wicked smile. She had enormous dark eyes and a floppy white hat that prevented Harry from seeing the color of her hair. "I am," she said. "My mother was Muggleborn, and my father married her back in a time when such things were _not done_. Plus I have an interest in another one of your causes. I stayed with a maternal aunt after my parents' deaths who abused me, you see."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Harry, smiling. Yes, he could see why Zabini had invited her now. "It sounds like we have a lot in common. Did your parents die in the war with Grindelwald?"

"Good guess. Yes, they both went to the Continent to try and help, and met their fates in different ways. My father died in a formal duel with Grindelwald himself." Melganthe tilted her head a little, as if she wanted to see Harry from a different angle. "My mother wasn't considered worthy of such a duel, being Muggleborn, so she was simply tortured to death."

"I'm sorry for your loss," said Harry as simply as he could. He had no idea how Melganthe felt at the moment. She talked about this in a way was that obviously meant to make an impression on him, but she watched him with sharp eyes and a smile.

"Thank you," said Melganthe. "And in return, may I console you for your upbringing? It sounds like you faced your own challenges."

Harry smiled a little and sat down in the empty chair next to her. He saw Zabini nod from the corner of his eye. Presumably that had been something he was planning. Well, Harry had no objection with fitting into someone else's plans as long as it benefited him.

"I did," Harry said. "But now that my childhood's been brought out into the open, it's valuable as a weapon." Melganthe raised her eyebrows. "There are all sorts of people who imagine they can hurt me with it," Harry said. "And that's not true, but it takes them a while to discover it."

Melganthe laughed. Harry grinned. And then they began to talk in a more private conversation, but Harry was still aware the instant Lucius passed him.

He moved in a _calm_ way, Harry thought. Before they slept together, he would have said it was stalking, or elegant, or confident, but really, calmness was the essence of the way Lucius usually walked and stood. Harry only had to contrast it with how Lucius's hands shook when they touched him.

Lucius knew he had a firm place in the political circles of the wizarding world and a way to defend himself. It made him harder to touch than most people. He had a base to strike from.

Harry wanted to have the same thing. And if Lucius could help him to attain it, all the better.

"Oh my," Melganthe murmured abruptly. "So it's like that between you, is it?"

Harry didn't pretend to misunderstand, which would be useless as well as annoying her. He turned back to her and nodded. "Although we're trying to keep it quiet until it can provide the biggest advantage," he added. "Do you mind not saying anything?"

Melganthe had turned her head to watch Lucius assume a chair on the far side of the semicircle. She turned back to Harry with her hands clasped and her eyes shining like pearls.

"I'd like a ringside seat," she said. "Perhaps in the Wizengamot? Is that where you'll announce it?"

"If it's not expedient to announce it earlier," Harry said, trying not to laugh. Normally, he was so annoyed when people speculated on who his lover was and how him dating someone would break hearts. But when that person was Lucius and they had the kind of impact they were having, it was just funny.

"Well, I shall at least look forward to the newspaper articles later," said Melganthe, glanced at Lucius again, and then moved back to their former topic, home investigations of Muggleborns' families, as though she'd never deviated from it.

 _I don't know why I was worried about becoming Lucius's lover,_ Harry thought. _It's like Skeeter prying into the Dursleys' treatment of me. It's annoying at the time, but it benefits me so much in the end._

* * *

Zabini leaned backwards with a glass of some red and cool drink in his hands—Lucius no longer bothered to keep up with the names of everything new; if it endured, then he would—and nodded to both of them. "You have a specific proposition to make to us?"

Harry turned and looked at Lucius. Lucius inclined his head in return. Either of them could have spoken, but it was only fair to let Harry start, since he would put the passion forwards first. Lucius would follow up with the practicalities.

"Yes," said Harry. "It's only in the last few years that I've come to realize a lot of your families _do_ have a culture beyond sneering at Muggleborns and following Dark Lords." That stirred some murmurs, but Harry only looked at them with wide and ingenuous green eyes, and they settled. "They have knowledge and traditions, proverbs and books, songs and history, that aren't taught in Hogwarts. Why would they be, when the classes there focus on spells and practice more than theory?"

"There are still written exams for the OWLS and NEWTS that emphasize theory," objected Flavius Helgon, one of the retired Wizengamot members. He grew a huge silver moustache that Lucius thought was in part to hide his expressions and make his face harder to read.

"But not the classes," said Harry. "And how many times do students fail to get high marks on them because they ask questions that aren't emphasized in class?" He sighed a little, probably, Lucius thought, at the blank faces lifted towards him. "The answer is, _often_. Either that, or they get fooled by minor differences in wording that are meant to make them choose among trick answers."

"The questions on the exams are hardly a _trick_!" Helgon said.

"Forgive me, sir," said Harry smoothly. "It's a term adopted from Muggle exams with answers that are so similar to each other they're meant to confuse the person sitting the exam."

Helgon spluttered a little, while Lucius relaxed and watched. He wouldn't need to step in for some time, it seemed. Harry had turned to look at the others, completely unruffled by the way Helgon had tried to interfere.

"Hogwarts doesn't teach Muggleborn children the culture," Harry was saying. "That might not be a great concern for those who return to the Muggle world. But at lot of them want to stay here, too. They simply don't feel welcome in a world they don't know much about. And any attempt to improve their knowledge is seen as trespassing on pure-blood territory, which further discourages anyone else learning about it. I'd like to see the boundaries of that territory expand, before it disappears with the dwindling of the protective families."

"Why should we try, though?" asked Melganthe. Lucius knew what she was doing: offering a milder version of a question that might show up in harder form later. "If Muggleborns cared about their world and its heritage, they would investigate, surely?"

"There's still the idea that they're trespassing I already mentioned," Harry said. "And many of the best books, the ones that pure-bloods use to teach their own children, are locked up in private libraries and the like. Or at Hogwarts, but they aren't encouraged there to seek them out. It's _encouragement_ that's the main problem. People like my friend Hermione Granger, who can stand up against the disapproval to educate themselves in law and custom, are rare."

"Then what would you have us do about it?" Zabini was leaning forwards with his elbows on his knees and his fascinated gaze on Harry.

"Welcome in Muggleborns," Harry said without hesitation. "Adopt some of the children we take away from abusive families, if their personalities prove congenial to your own. Fund schools that could educate the children _before_ they arrive at Hogwarts. Make copies of some old books and release them. Volunteer to become teachers yourselves, if that's within your purview."

"I think I would make a wonderful teacher," said Melganthe. "Not professor, perhaps. But a teacher I could do."

Lucius experienced a brief, terrifying vision of a generation of young minds molded by Kait Melganthe. Then he stopped shuddering. In this case, the vision was one that would help his and Harry's case.

"I hope some people do take up those tasks," Harry said, and drew in the others with a look around. That was something he hadn't studied, Lucius thought. Learned, perhaps, from those speeches he'd had to make after the war because there was no one else. But he gathered them in, pulled them in, and made them part of what he was proposing. "We _need_ pure-bloods. This isn't a task for Muggleborns alone, which is something I've heard some people saying. We need you to tell us all the things we don't know."

 _Brilliant,_ Lucius wanted to tell him. Harry was letting them have some position of superiority, so they wouldn't have to give everything up at once, or think themselves doomed before the coming tide of Muggleborns. He smiled at them now, and even the more hesitant were starting to smile back.

But Helgon was still stubborn.

"We can't just _adopt_ Muggleborn children," he said, fussily. "Blood matters. More than culture." He turned to Lucius. "And I'm sorry that you would support such an unrealistic delusion, Lucius. Where's your Malfoy pride?"

Lucius looked towards Harry, a faint flicker of a question as he stood. Harry answered with the angle of his shoulder. Lucius was welcome to come forwards and take this particular challenge. Harry faded towards the back, and Lucius moved until he was directly in front of Helgon's chair but still visible to everyone there. Melganthe was the only one who smiled as if she recognized the scripted nature of the change.

"I have my pride," Lucius said. "I understand the claims of blood. I have made the best provision I can for them. And at the same time, I understand the nature of such claims cannot always be the same as the claims of principle."

A few of the people who knew Draco's exploits best snorted at that. Helgon might not have, because he frowned. "Then you would adopt a Muggleborn child, Lucius?"

"If I didn't have a son, then yes. I want my family line to continue."

Helgon gaped at him. Lucius raised an eyebrow and continued, "And it may yet be best to leave some of the books my ancestors have gathered, if not the heirlooms, elsewhere." The heirlooms he was thinking of could only be handled by someone with a blood connection to his ancestors. The books, though…

There was knowledge in them which Draco would inevitably misuse. Perhaps his children wouldn't, but they might never get a glimpse at them, either. Lucius still had to await the future and, assuming no change in his son, find someone to leave them to.

"But plenty of other pure-blood families have children," Helgon argued weakly.

"And plenty of others don't," said Zabini, looking interested. "I've experienced pressure to marry myself, and it's wearying, the idea that just _producing_ people is more important than the kind of people who result. It might be more interesting and advisable to choose your heir than create them."

 _Especially with the threat of your mother perhaps removing any wife she deems unsuitable,_ Lucius thought.

"I've had it, too," said Melganthe, with a nod. "Most of the people who tried to threaten me into it have different ideas now, but dealing with them while they thought I should do it was bad enough."

"Of course," Harry cut in smoothly, "we wouldn't ask just anyone to adopt any child. There's the question of compatible personalities. Some Muggleborn children would probably be glad to leave the Muggle world entirely. Others might want to visit their parents. This might be a tapestry of temporary and permanent arrangements…"

 _He does it very well,_ Lucius thought, as Harry began to explain the way he saw the adopting process working. He might not care about most political issues—one reason a lot of people in the Ministry saw him as dangerous—but the ones that he did care about, he put thought and study into.

As Helgon sank into grumbling silence and Melganthe and Zabini asked brightly leading questions, Lucius studied the gathering. They wouldn't light the wizarding world on fire tomorrow. They wouldn't march out and besiege the Ministry and force them to investigate situations that might be harmful to children.

But they could start the groundswell that would change things. And Harry was wise enough now to anticipate the groundswell and work with it instead of demanding the cascade.

Harry caught Lucius's eye once during the conversation that followed, and smiled. Lucius tilted his head back. The kind of smile he wanted to give Harry was not proper for a public gathering.

When they were back behind closed doors, however, and had some worthwhile time alone together…

 _I meant what I said. I am his first lover? I will be his only._


	8. Openness

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of this story. I hope everyone's enjoyed it.

 _Chapter Eight—Openness_

"You were magnificent today, you know."

Harry laughed. Lucius glanced at him, no more than an exploratory touch of a glance, but Harry knew what he wanted, and gave the explanation. "I was going to say the same thing about you. I mean, the exact same wording. I wondered whether you read it out of my head."

"I am not a Legilimens." Lucius wandered around the kitchen table towards him, still holding the celebratory glass of mead Harry had given him in one hand. "There are times it would be a useful talent, but now I am glad that I am not." This time, his free hand came up in the exploratory touch, and wandered around the corners of Harry's eyes and down his cheeks.

"Why is that?" Harry whispered.

"Because it would tell me all your thoughts when I looked into your eyes, and I want to savor some of them."

Lucius put the glass of mead down on the table—he would probably never drank anything Harry gave him unless Harry improved his own taste in alcohol a _lot_ , Harry supposed—and let his other hand rise. His thumbs hardly touched Harry's skin. It didn't matter. It still made Harry feel like he'd had a dozen glasses of mead.

He leaned up and kissed Lucius before he could give Harry some other compliment that would dizzy him further. Lucius opened his mouth in what might have been a surprised gasp, but in seconds it had become simply a kiss, and he licked delicately around Harry's tongue.

Harry let Lucius turn him so his back was to the table and lean him against it, fingers skimming under his clothes, seeking and finding more scars. Harry hissed as they sprang to life under Lucius's hands. "How can you make them so sensitive?" he asked, as his mouth spasmed away from Lucius's so he could gasp.

"They were always that sensitive," Lucius said, a blatant lie as he trailed his hands back and forth. "They only needed the right one to call them forth."

"Pretty confident, aren't you?" Harry shuddered as Lucius coaxed sensation from even the scar on his right arm where Wormtail had cut him for the blood Voldemort needed long ago.

"I can be. You have welcomed me in."

Lucius moved back up to his face, and specifically his lips. He kissed Harry until his head spun again, and made his legs weaken with a careful push on the small of his back. Harry sprawled on the table and looked up through eyes he knew were hazy as Lucius bent over him.

Lucius did take the time to move his glass of mead out of the way, which made Harry grin. He shook his head, presumably at the expression on Harry's face, as he put his wand away. "I do not want to have to deal with petty distractions while kissing you."

"What about other kinds of distractions?" Harry asked, and managed to move his foot, even though he was almost lying down, so he could run a foot up the back of Lucius's leg.

Lucius's face changed—slightly, but it was as good as a shout. Harry reached up and caught his hair, tangling it around his fingers on purpose, before pulling his head down and kissing his cheek. Lucius tried to turn his head and kiss him on the lips, but Harry muttered and held him still.

"No. Now I want to sit in your lap and kiss you."

* * *

 _He does not act like a virgin._

And Lucius held some fondness for that fact. It would have been tiresome, he had to admit, to wait for Harry to get over shyness and stammering and blushing. It had taken long enough with Narcissa, when they were first together.

Harry did everything differently than Lucius had imagined, it turned out. He sat _straddling_ his lap, facing him, instead of sideways, and he gave him the sort of considering look and grin that filled Lucius's mouth with saliva like the smell of hot mustard did. Then he leaned forwards and kissed him on the nose, the cheek, the chin, and the other cheek.

"Harry."

"Tsk, Lucius, so undignified."

Lucius didn't think he sounded undignified, and he opened his mouth to say so. But Harry hushed him by the simple expedient of tracing one finger down from the corner of his eye to his mouth, the path a teardrop would take. Lucius found himself falling silent in sheer wonder.

"Thank you," Harry whispered. "Thank you for teaching me that there's so much pleasure in having someone else touch me."

Lucius was unsure what he could have said in response to that, and as it turned out, he didn't need to come up with something. Harry's hand found its way into his hair, and he stroked once, twice, fingernails rubbing on his scalp in a way that made Lucius's eyes close in a languid blink. Then Harry bowed his head and licked a strip of skin running up from Lucius's chin close to his eye, the path his fingers had already followed.

Lucius caught Harry's hand and kissed the palm, turned it to the side, and kissed the back. Then he stood up, sliding Harry gently to the floor and looked pointedly towards the door on the other side of the fireplace.

"I suppose you want to do it in a bed this time. Now you're _over-_ dignified."

Lucius didn't bother to respond to that. Anything he said would only give Harry more food for laughter—and while Lucius didn't _mind_ that, precisely, there were more important things he wanted to do right now. He wrapped his arm around Harry's back and nudged him along with little steps until Harry got the idea and walked on his own, head cocked back so he could laugh soundlessly at Lucius.

The bedroom was plain, as Lucius had expected, although not bare. Harry had one empty portrait frame on the wall above the fireplace, which was made of white stone, and a door to the side that led to a bathroom. The bed was wooden, shaped a little like the four-posters of Hogwarts, but uncarved and without a canopy or curtains. The pillows were the only fanciful touch; there were four of them, yellow and blue and red and green, and each one shaped like the animal of the Hogwarts House associated with that color.

Lucius gave the green snake—which had huge bulging eyes and a dopily hanging tongue—a level look and moved it out of the way. Harry lay back on the plain white sheets and let his legs dangle, grinning at him.

"Over-dignified. I knew it."

Lucius hushed him by the simple act of touching that scar on his arm, which seemed to be the most sensitive one, and holding it there while he took Harry's clothes off with his other hand. When he finally had to take his hand away because he couldn't move the sleeve off Harry's arm otherwise, Harry was bright-eyed and silent and as red as his lion pillow.

Lucius undid his own robes with help. Well, "help." Harry's feet played along his hips and smoothed up and down the silken material over his legs as he worked the buttons loose.

"You _are_ ridiculous," Harry whispered by the time Lucius was lying down naked beside him. Harry seemed to enjoy finding the few scars on Lucius's chest, souvenirs of the first war, and following each of them to the end.

Conscious of the heat that played in ember-colored flames around his eyes, Lucius shook his head. "Ridiculous and dignified are not the same thing."

"But ridiculous and _over-_ dignified might be."

"Any word you repeat too often becomes boring," Lucius murmured, and had the satisfaction of seeing Harry's mouth clap closed. But then Harry lay there and mock-scowled at him through several touches on his scars, which prompted Lucius finally to lean towards him and whisper, "Although I assure you that you are the least boring person it has ever been my pleasure to find."

" _Find?_ What do you do, go around discovering them like treasures?" Harry stretched lazily, smiling at Lucius, and held up his arms so Lucius could tickle the sensitive areas underneath them. Harry's breathing sped up, but still he didn't stutter, an achievement Lucius found impressive. "And h-how many people have you been with?"

"You should ask, not how many I have been with, but how many I am going to _stay_ with?" Lucius found an otherwise undistinguished spot on Harry's left side that would make him jerk and kick like a nervous horse when he kissed it.

"Well, all right," Harry said. _Finally, a little breathlessness._ He reached out and tangled his fingers in Lucius's hair. "How many?"

"One. The one I am with now."

The appreciative widening of Harry's eyes and the way he immediately tried to slam their mouths together was no more than Lucius had expected, but gratifying to see anyway.

* * *

Lucius prepared him with gentle fingers. Harry liked that, and arched against his fingers a few times, stretching his arms out and murmuring as he watched Lucius smear lube on his hand and on Harry's hole and his cock.

"No one else has touched you here," Lucius murmured.

"Of course not. If I'm a virgin, then—"

"I was reassuring myself."

Harry blinked. "Oh," was all he could find to say. He didn't know why Lucius should need to _reassure_ himself, but as long as it was that and not doubting Harry, then Harry could let it go.

Lucius opened him up, and Harry sucked on his tongue and then on Lucius's fingers when he offered them. It wasn't—painful, exactly. It was that Harry had never imagined that particular sensation, and it took him a while to frown through it and get used to it. But he nodded the minute Lucius asked if he was ready.

"You cannot be sure of that, not yet," Lucius said, and his fingers played restlessly along Harry's arse.

"Then by all means, go on." Harry grinned at him. "It isn't like this is _awful_ and I shall repine if you don't fuck me immediately."

Lucius's nostrils flared, and he swayed nearer as if inspired by Harry's voice. Harry watched him in fascination. There was something wonderful about seeing one of the most powerful men he knew bow to the influence of his voice.

"Patience," Lucius said, to someone who might have been either himself or Harry, and then went back to preparing Harry with careful motions of his fingers.

Harry closed his eyes. The sensation had become a little more familiar, and he liked it. At least if it was the prelude to Lucius getting closer to him, and Lucius's breaths were falling over his hips and now and then stuttering when Harry gave a little flex of his hips.

Of course, Harry could hardly imagine something more intimate than this, but that just made him more excited. If he couldn't imagine it, he thought it would be all the more powerful when Lucius was finally inside him.

Lucius satisfied himself of Harry's readiness, or perhaps—this was the interpretation Harry preferred—decided that he couldn't hold back any longer. He reared up and slid his slick cock slowly towards Harry, watching him with narrow eyes all the while as if he expected Harry to leap up suddenly with shrieks about his virtue.

But Harry, not being a damsel in a novel, wriggled encouragingly, and Lucius slid inside instead and stopped with a vicious check of his breath.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked, lifting a hand to smooth it along his cheek. He found that appropriate. Lucius was long and smooth inside him, and Harry's fingers looked the same way on his face.

Lucius ducked his head and kissed Harry with the same kind of soft viciousness. Harry lifted his head higher, even though Lucius pulled back and almost frowned at him.

"You truly feel no pain?" Lucius gave another thrust, and Harry gasped in delight. "This is not the act of a Gryffindor martyr?"

Harry had to laugh outright. "Do you go around bedding a lot of Gryffindor martyrs?"

"Never again."

Harry swallowed. He _liked_ the passion in Lucius's voice, but it was hard to respond to. He said only, "No, I'm not a martyr. I gave that up after the war. Along with lying and sitting back and waiting for someone else to do something about the causes I care about." He spread his legs encouragingly and lifted his arse as high as he could. " _Do something_ , Lucius. Or I will." He slid his hand downwards.

"I think," Lucius said, and gently put off his hand, "that I want that to be mine for the foreseeable future."

"I don't know how to tell you this," said Harry gravely, and Lucius paused and eyed him. "But yours is the one inside me. The one I'm touching is mine."

Lucius laughed, thankfully, just after Harry had begun to wonder whether his joke was tasteless. He kissed Harry on the hand and began to move again inside him. Harry closed his eyes and murmured happily, snuggling a little closer to Lucius's chest.

For a while, it was nice. Lucius moved slowly, his head bowed, hair swinging through Harry's sometimes, and then brushing along his chest or shoulders when Lucius moved back. And Lucius's hands were smooth and cool on his forehead and cheeks, gradually heating up.

Then Lucius caught his breath, and jabbed a few times, harder than Harry thought he meant to. Harry grunted once. Lucius's eyes flew open and he gave him a steady look.

"It's all right," Harry murmured, moving his head a little. "What you need to do is thrust harder."

Lucius raised his eyebrows as if giving himself permission to doubt that, but he did thrust harder, and then it became, all at once, _pure_ pleasure. Harry reached out and managed to capture the back of Lucius's legs, tugging him forwards until Lucius almost tumbled onto him. He grunted explosively, and Harry nodded and pulled him still further and further in.

They ended up with Lucius almost doubled up between Harry's legs, crouching over him, and now both their skin and their eyes burned.

"Come on," Harry whispered.

Lucius let go of whatever reservations he'd still had—maybe because Harry was a virgin—and fucked harder.

 _Had been,_ Harry thought then, with enormous smugness, as he spread his legs to let them dangle over the sides of the bed. _Had been a virgin._

 _And I'm glad it was him. He did it without making me feel strange about it._

And now he was doing something more than that. Harry found himself reaching up with fingers like claws, hooking them around Lucius's nipples. Lucius hissed, but his pace didn't falter.

It was delightful, toying with him like this. Harry's fingers flickered back and forth. Lucius closed his eyes, and still didn't slow down.

 _What can I do that will make him open them again?_

Harry thought of something, something simple and yet which would never have occurred to him before he had that first experience of having someone inside him. He smiled and squeezed down on Lucius's cock.

Lucius _wheezed._ It was the best sound Harry had ever heard. His eyes flew open again and he stared with his mouth slightly open.

Harry gave him his best innocent grin and pout. "What?" he added, and squeezed again.

There was a perfect moment when Lucius just gaped. And then he let loose all the pounding force that he'd had penned up inside him. Maybe he hadn't thought Harry could take it before now.

 _I can,_ Harry thought, soaring higher as he was literally pounded. He drew his fingers down Lucius's chest again, and realized Lucius had nothing left to give. This was it. This was the flat-out, full-out ride.

It was wonderful. Tension was already spiraling around Harry, even though it usually took him some time to get going when he wanked.

 _But I won't have to do that again, now that I have Lucius. If he's serious._

 _Unless he might like to watch…_

This time, Harry's squeeze down was entirely involuntary, since he'd started to come.

Lucius stilled above him, and watched every movement as though he was saving it in his memories to devour later. Harry let his breath stutter and his eyes remain wide open, because he thought Lucius would like to see that.

Lucius watched him all the way through. And only began thrusting again when Harry once more lay still, panting a little. It was as if he thought that Harry would like to focus on his own pleasure first, and only have Lucius's pleasure later, when he could enjoy it undistracted.

Harry _did_ like that, although he hadn't known he would. He liked watching the delicate flush make its way over Lucius's throat, and down his neck. He liked seeing the way his fingers closed hard on Harry's hips and his head tilted back and his hair wavered. And he liked the soft noises Lucius made when he finally conceded to his orgasm and let a little air escape.

Lucius rested at last beside Harry, much the way he had the first night they spent together, his eyes closed and his flanks trembling. Harry ran a hand down them. Lucius let him until he got close to his arse, and then shook his head and opened his eyes.

"That—is sensitive, yet."

Harry grinned. He liked knowing Lucius's arse was sensitive after sex, too.

And Lucius willing to show that was something he had never imagined. So Harry didn't tease him, but simply rolled close and gathered him even closer.

And was asleep in seconds after he did that. It seemed becoming a not-virgin was more tiring than he'd anticipated.

* * *

Lucius ran a hand slowly over Harry's body.

He traced a slow line—down Harry's arm to his hip, from his shoulder to his foot, and back up again. Harry never stirred. In fact, his chest moved with such slow breaths that Lucius might have been anxious, had he not left behind all such anxiety long ago.

Then again, until tonight, he had thought he had left behind such pleasure, too.

Lucius lay down slowly, wondering. He knew the pleasure would cool a little in time, become familiar. The day was never the same as the dawn.

But he had the impression that Harry would press on to show him other wonders, other new things, with no end to them.

Lucius looked forward to it.

* * *

"Ready?"

Lucius's voice was a faint murmur beside him. Harry smiled at him and walked into the ballroom ahead of them for answer.

The Wizengamot held a number of galas each year—for charity, to welcome important or famous foreign wizards, to celebrate particular legal victories. It hadn't taken _that_ much interest in Harry and Lucius's cause to persuade them to hold another one, in the ballroom at the Ministry reserved for them. The sparkling gold decorations on the walls made Harry have to pause and blink, though. He'd never been here when it was decorated like this. The Ministry usually went for a bit more subdued or subtle.

Then again, the Wizengamot might not want _subtle_.

 _Probably not, if they're going to tell people that the cause Lucius and I have is reasonable,_ Harry thought, and leaned back a little. Lucius was already standing at his shoulder, head bowed as he murmured into Harry's ear.

"Draco is here. Near the back. And so is Zabini. No—wait, Zabini is moving towards the front. I think he wants to be in position to see perfectly well." Lucius chuckled, and the sound slid down Harry's spine with a deliciousness he could never have imagined before. "And your friends?"

"Here," Harry answered, with a tilt of his head towards the food table.

"Good," said Lucius. "Then we'll begin as soon as you've finished your speech."

Harry thought he was probably grinning widely enough to look stupid, but he didn't much care. He walked towards the front of the room, where a small podium was set up. Wizengamot members were standing around it chattering, but they fell silent, and so did most of the guests, when Harry walked up the steps.

"Thank you for coming," Harry said. His magic had snapped into place around his mouth the instant he willed it to, and the words echoed around the ballroom as easily as they would with a _Sonorus_ Charm. "I think you should know that the Wizengamot has formed an official committee and already identified sixteen Muggleborn children at Hogwarts who have agreed to a home investigation. It's identified a few others in precarious situations—orphanages, for example—who will be seen before the end of the month."

Applause followed, and Harry narrowed his eyes a little so that the wink of light off the huge illusory Galleons on the walls wouldn't blind him. He held out his hand, and Lucius slipped up to him and put his own in it.

There was a sharp splutter from near the wall. Harry grinned. That had to be Malfoy—Draco, he supposed. And Zabini was right in the first rank of Wizengamot onlookers, his smirk enormous.

"This cause," Harry said, and he didn't need to change his voice much to make it deeper and more sentimental, "has the ability to bring people together. Just _look_ at the way it's united Lucius and me." There was a lot of murmuring at the way he had used Lucius's first name, but Harry ignored that. He had known there would be, and even invited it, sort of. "And we wanted you to be the first ones to know."

He beamed at everybody, and then moved as if he would step down from the podium. But it was actually Kait Melganthe who asked, "What did you want us to know?"

"Why," Harry said, after he turned around and checked quickly that both she and Zabini were in the right place to see Draco's face, "that we're so close and united we've become lovers."

Draco danced into view. He was making grabs at the air with hooked fingernails, as if he was trying to catch fish. He spluttered and choked and said nothing because too many words were fighting in his throat to emerge at once, if Harry was any judge. He waved a wordless hand and jumped up and down.

Zabini started applauding. Melganthe followed quickly. Harry grinned. He knew what they would _pretend_ the applause was for, but anyone who had been watching would know what the real target was.

"And now that that's done with," Harry said, "my partner and I will dance to celebrate our success."

He took Lucius's hand and led him towards the dance floor. Behind him, Draco's further spluttering competed with Ron's deep-throated sigh.

 _But nobody is going to interfere. Because we won't let them._

* * *

Lucius, in the middle of a turn around the floor with Harry, saw his son.

Draco was standing almost alone, with the crowd around him pulling back as if he had repelled them. Perhaps his despair had, Lucius thought; desperation of that kind was rarely attractive to the kind of political sharks that swam the waters of the Ministry.

He stared at Lucius, and said and did nothing from the time that Lucius turned around to the time he turned around again, due to the demands of the dance, and could see Draco once more. Then he mouthed a single word. _Why?_

Lucius tightened his hold on Harry in silent answer.

Amazingly, it was Harry who caught Draco's eye and smiled, and then mouthed, _It'll be all right._

Draco stared at them both in complete incomprehension. But then he shook his head, gave one of those gusty sighs Harry's Weasley friend was always uttering, and went off, probably to soothe his sorrows with one of the few superior brandies the Ministry had.

"That was kindly done of you," Lucius murmured.

"Your connections are going to be mine," Harry said. He hesitated, one flicker, as he lifted his hand and placed it on Lucius's hair. "At least, if you meant your promise about staying with me."

"Are you _that_ insecure?" Lucius asked curiously. He truly wanted to know. He supposed it was possible that Harry's bravery and power masked a trembling fragility, but he hadn't sensed it so far, and that was surprising.

Then Harry smiled, and the light it cast was much more to Lucius's taste than the ostentatious decorations of the Galleons on the walls.

"No," Harry said. "I only wanted to know if you did. I'm used to people moving on. Or not keeping promises. Or not being able to spend time with me, through no fault of their own."

 _No. It was strength he was hiding,_ Lucius thought—a strength that humbled him. Harry was offering him the chance to walk away if his own politics meant more to him than the quest they shared. Or because he didn't want to torment Draco. Or for a hundred other reasons.

 _His kindness is for me, too._

Lucius took Harry's hand and kissed the back of it, his eyes locked firmly on Harry's face. "No. I _will_ to stay."

Harry grinned then, and even better, the magic he had lent Lucius flared around his shoulders, into the visible semblance of a glittering green-and-gold cloak. Lucius had never felt anything like its folds around him, except Harry's arms.

"Good," Harry said. "Because I want you to. And I want to be here."

It wasn't often that Lucius was content, or even happy. Many of his joys were partial, the way that his family had become. Draco survived, he would have children, he would be happy, but he was not exactly what Lucius had wanted in a son. And his marriage had not worked out, and politics was ever about the art of compromise.

But this—this was exactly what he wanted, and how could that but make him joyful?

b **The End./b**


End file.
